Counting EU border rejections ranks suppliers wrongly

A count of EU border rejections says as much about how an origin ships as about how risky it is. A rejected lot of Turkish pistachios is typically 5 tonnes; an Iranian one is 22. Measured against the tonnes each origin actually sends, the origin with the most rejections is often not the riskiest: for peppers, groundnuts and rice, the most-rejected origin ranks third or lower per tonne.

This is for importers and QA teams comparing suppliers across origins, and for anyone quoting RASFF counts. Every product page on this site, and its dashboard, now measures rejections per tonne of the same product for this reason.

Lots differ in size, origin by origin

RASFF records the weight of each rejected consignment. Taking only the member states that record the whole lot (see Method), typical rejected lots of the same product look like this:

Fresh produce from Kenya, Uganda and Vietnam is rejected in lots of a few hundred kilograms, Turkish produce in lots of one to five tonnes, and nuts and rice in lots of 15 to 25 tonnes. A rejected 25-tonne lot of rice and a rejected 100-kilogram lot of chillies are one row each in RASFF.

What that does to a ranking

Each product page gives the count of border rejections over three years and "1 border rejection per X tonnes imported". The two orders disagree:

Turkey tops the pepper count because it ships the most peppers to the EU, not because its peppers fail most often. Per tonne it is the second-cleanest of the seven origins with enough trade to rate.

The weight field is also a member-state habit

The same field that shows lot sizes shows how differently member states fill it in. Of 6,727 border rejections since 2020 that carry a weight, 42% record something the size of one package: a 25 kg bag, a carton, a 1.25-tonne big bag.

Greece files nearly all of the EU's Nigerian and Sudanese sesame rejections and records the bag, so those origins have no lot size here. The Netherlands records most Egyptian groundnut rejections at 1.1 to 1.25 tonnes, the weight of one big bag, some of them without the description saying so. So a lot weight means something only where the filing state records whole lots, and this site uses it only there.

What this means if you…

• …compare suppliers across origins: rank them per tonne of the same product, not by count. The product pages and the dashboard's default view do this.
• …quote RASFF counts: say what the count leaves out. "Most rejections" is usually "ships the most".
• …read a lot weight in a RASFF record: check which member state filed it before reading it as the consignment's size.

---

Method. Counts and "1 border rejection per X tonnes" are quoted from the site's origin-and-product pages as of 25 September 2026 (RASFF data to 23 September): border rejections over the 12-quarter window, against FAOSTAT EU import quantities for 2022–2024, rated only above 5 rejections and 1,000 tonnes a year. Lot sizes use border rejections since 1 January 2020 with a recorded weight. A weight counts as one package when it is 60 kg or less, or 1,500 kg or less with a package description naming a bag or sack. A member state counts as recording lots when at least 50 of its border rejections carry a weight and at most 30% of them look like one package: Bulgaria, France, Germany and Switzerland. Only their records give lot sizes, and a lot size is shown only from 8 lots. Records naming more than one origin are left out.

Follow Turkey's border rejections with a weekly alert: