Risk assessment

CEA has industry-leading specialists in the exposure modelling and ecotoxicology areas, ensuring maximum refinement of phase I and phase II environmental risk assessments.

Terrestrial exposure

We are leaders in conducting and refining veterinary medicine exposure assessments. We specialise in higher-tier refinements, including

  • consideration of metabolism and excretion profiles
  • animal husbandry considerations, including manure handling and degradation
  • use of FOCUS SW and FOCUS GW scenarios, including assessments of scenario relevance to different Member States and product usages
  • Member-State-specific refinements, e.g., the use of UK higher-tier drainflow ERA
  • temporal and spatial modelling refinements.

Uniquely, we can mine the vast reservoir of experience held by our animal husbandry and manure management colleagues who provide on-farm advice to large food producers and policy advice to UK government and its agencies to refine and create realistic exposure scenarios. We go further than most, employing this knowledge at a catchment scale to support policy advice and influencing the regulatory process through the refinement of standard scenarios and the development of software (VetCalc).

Aquatic exposure

CEA has extensive experience in using the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) bath treatment models, both short and long term, to estimate the exposure of veterinary medicines used as bath treatments in marine aquaculture, as well as experience in assessing risk from in-feed medicines and vaccines. Specialist expertise is employed in the refinement of exposure through

  • considering metabolism and excretion
  • constructing more realistic scenarios
  • introducing additional loss pathways such as deposition or dose-dependent degradation
  • using specialist models such as DEPOMOD and developing non-standard scenarios.

Ecotoxicology

In addition to undertaking assessments of existing and new studies for endpoint establishment, our specialists are skilled at refining risk assessments taking into consideration issues such as recovery and recolonisation of species or the read-across of freshwater studies to marine environments. We also offer in-house bespoke higher-tier aquatic ecotoxicology studies, both indoor laboratory and outdoor mesocosm studies.

Meet the team