Ethylene oxide in RASFF: 93% below 2021, now spices and supplements

Published 23 September 2026 · numbers as of 21 September 2026

Ethylene oxide has not gone away from EU food alerts, but it has shrunk and moved. RASFF logged 345 ethylene oxide notifications in 2021 and 25 in the last 12 months, 93% fewer. The sesame that started it has almost disappeared. What is left is mostly spices and food supplements, and nearly half of it is now stopped at the EU border rather than recalled from shops.

This is for QA and compliance teams, importers and labs deciding whether ethylene oxide still belongs in a testing plan, and for which products.

From a flood to a trickle

The first notifications came in September 2020, on sesame seeds from India. The fourth quarter of 2020 alone brought 321. Volume stayed high through 2021 and fell steeply after that. Since the second quarter of 2023 it has run at 6 to 14 a quarter.

Year	Notifications	Alerts	Border rejections	Information
2020	323	275	5	43
2021	345	264	30	51
2022	152	70	57	25
2023	56	16	38	2
2024	39	4	28	7
2025	30	9	16	5
2026 (to 21 Sep)	19	7	8	4

The type of notification changed as much as the count. In 2020 and 2021, 81% were alerts: product already on sale, found by market testing, often recalled. Border rejections were 5%. Since 2023, border rejections are 62% of the total.

Then and now

	2021	Last 12 months
Notifications	345	25
Alerts	77%	36%
Border rejections	9%	48%
Origin includes India	50%	36%
Sesame	31%	4% (1)
Thickeners (locust bean gum, guar, carob)	16%	0
Spices and herbs	18%	44%
Supplements and plant extracts	16%	24%
Rice	1%	12% (3)

Two waves made up the peak. The first was Indian sesame, and every product made with it: bread, muesli, spice mixes. Sesame was 63% of notifications from September 2020 to December 2021. It fell to 2 notifications in 2022 and 1 or none a year since. The second wave came in 2021, when ethylene oxide was found in locust bean gum (E410) and other thickeners, mostly in ice cream. Because the ingredient went into finished goods, France (84) and Germany (57) were the next origins after India (173) that year.

Neither wave is still running. Thickeners have produced four notifications since the start of 2023.

Where it sits now

The last 12 months are a spread of small cases, not one product:

Spices, 11 notifications. Garam masala, biryani masala, chilli powder, black pepper and cumin from India; cinnamon from Vietnam; black garlic and turmeric extract from China; spice mixes from Lebanon and the US.
Supplements and extracts, 6. Boswellia extract and a supplement from India, supplements from China, the US and Slovenia.
Rice, 3. Three organic brown rice notifications within four days in June 2026, two naming Pakistan as origin.
Sesame, 1. Indian sesame, rejected at an Italian border post in August 2026.

India is still the largest single origin: 9 of 25 in the last year and 85 of 144 since 2023. China is next, with 4 in the last 12 months.

The regulatory background

From the legal texts, not RASFF data: Ethylene oxide is not approved as an active substance for plant protection products in the EU, and it is classified as a mutagen, carcinogen and reproductive toxicant (category 1B). Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1540 of 22 October 2020 amended Regulation 2019/1793 for sesame seeds from India. It cited RASFF findings more than 1,000 times the 0.05 mg/kg limit. It required an official certificate with pesticide test results for every consignment and raised border checks for pesticide residues, ethylene oxide included, to 50%.

For the locust bean gum wave, EU crisis coordinators concluded on 13 July 2021 that no safe level of exposure could be defined. Products containing contaminated E410 had to be withdrawn and recalled at any level. That rule is why 2021 produced so many alerts on finished foods.

Indian sesame is still under Regulation 2019/1793. The India sesame page shows checks at 30% for Salmonella and 20% for pesticide residues (consolidated text of 30 June 2026). Its most-cited hazards over the last three years are Salmonella, haloxyfop and chlorpyrifos, not ethylene oxide.

What this means if you…

…run QA on sesame: ethylene oxide is no longer the main risk in the data for Indian sesame. Keep it on the certificate check, but put testing effort where the current rejections are.
…import spices, botanical extracts or supplements: this is where ethylene oxide still turns up, mostly from India and China. Ask for ethylene oxide results (sum with 2-chloroethanol) on those lots specifically. See India herbs and spices, India supplements and China supplements.
…run a lab or certification scheme: demand is now a steady few cases a quarter across many matrices, including organic rice, tea and raspberries. The ethylene oxide hazard page lists every notification.

Method. 964 EU RASFF notifications validated from 9 September 2020 to 21 September 2026 whose hazard list contains "ethylene oxide". This is the same rule the site's hazard page uses. A further 74 notifications cite only 2-chloroethanol, ethylene oxide's breakdown product: 2 in 2020, 27 in 2021, 30 in 2022, 10 in 2023, 5 in 2024 and none since. They are left out of the counts above. "Alerts" are alert notifications. "Information" covers both information types. Product groups are assigned from keywords in each notification's subject. A notification naming two origins counts for both. Fewer notifications can mean fewer contaminated lots or less testing, and RASFF data cannot tell them apart. 2026 is incomplete.

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