What the EU sees about your country's food exports, a self-check

This guide is for food exporters, and for the trade bodies and competent authorities that support them. It shows how to see your country's record the way EU border officials see it: which products get stopped, for which hazards, how that compares with competing origins, and what the EU already requires at the border. It takes about twenty minutes. The worked example is India.

RASFF is the EU's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed. When a member state stops a consignment at the border, or finds a risk in a product already on sale, it notifies the system. Your buyers' QA teams read this data. It helps to read it before they do.

Step 1: Open your country page

Start with your origin page, for example India. India received 555 border rejections between 2023-Q4 and 2026-Q3. The quarterly count peaked at 71 in 2024-Q1 and has fallen since, to 28 to 35 per quarter in 2026.

The page has a category table. For India, five categories carry most of the load:

Step 2: Find the hazards behind the count

The hazards tell you what to test for. For India the picture is clear: 334 of the 555 rejections, 60%, cite a pesticide residue. On the pesticide residues page, India is the second most-cited origin across all years, after Turkey.

Two other points stand out. First, 111 of India's 555 rejections cite no hazard at all. Their subjects show why: missing or improper official certificates, lab reports that do not describe the sampling, and identification codes on the packaging that do not match the test report. These are paperwork failures, and they are the cheapest to fix. Second, the ethylene oxide page names India as the origin in 607 of 964 notifications since 2020. Most of that is history. In the last 12 quarters it appears in 50 Indian border rejections, mainly in spices (24) and supplements (14).

Step 3: Compare your rate with competing origins

A big exporter gets more rejections because it ships more. So each product page gives a rate: border rejections per $1 billion of EU imports of that product from that origin, over three years, and a rank among origins shipping the same product. The rates below are quoted from the product pages.

So India's problem lines are groundnuts and fresh vegetables, not rice. Rice has the second-largest count but sits mid-table on rate. Only compare rates within one product: a groundnut rate and a rice rate are measured against different trade.

Step 4: Check whether you are under EU 2019/1793

EU Implementing Regulation 2019/1793 lists product and origin pairs that face extra controls at the border. Product pages show the listing and the check frequency where one applies, from the consolidated text of 30 June 2026.

For India, groundnuts face 50% identity and physical checks for aflatoxins (Annex II), rice 10% for pesticide residues (Annex I), and sesame 30% for Salmonella and 20% for pesticide residues (Annex II). Parts of herbs and spices and of other vegetables are listed at up to 50%, depending on the exact product.

The annex matters:

• Annex I means a temporary increase in official controls at entry. Your consignment is more likely to be sampled and held.
• Annex II adds special conditions. Each consignment must travel with the results of sampling and analysis by your country's competent authority, from a lab accredited to ISO/IEC 17025, and an official certificate. Every bag must carry the consignment's identification code.

Missing certificates, incomplete lab reports and mismatched bag codes are exactly the failures the no-hazard rejections in step 2 describe. The Commission reviews both lists at least every six months to reflect new information on risks and non-compliance, so a listing can change.

Step 5: See which borders stop your goods

Each notification names the member state that found the problem. For India, France notified 113 of the 555 rejections, the Netherlands 84, Italy 48, Poland 44 and Latvia 43. The pattern is sharper by product: of 32 rejections with groundnuts or peanuts in the subject, 19 came from the Netherlands. The Netherlands page lists India as the origin it rejects most often. The France page lists it second.

If your buyers enter through one port, that authority's record is the most relevant one to read.

Step 6: Look beyond border rejections

The origin and product pages count border rejections only. RASFF also has alerts, for risky products already on the EU market, and information notifications. In the same 12 quarters India had 96 alerts and 229 information notifications on top of its 555 rejections. Herbs and spices accounted for 38 of the alerts.

A smaller exporter shows why this matters. Peru had 21 border rejections in the period, but 32 alerts. Seven of those alerts were for cadmium, and all seven were avocados, found on sale rather than at the border. The Peru page's rejection count shows none of them. The weekly pages and the hazard pages include every classification.

Step 7: Act on the product line, not the country

• Test before shipping for the hazards shown, not a generic panel. For Indian rice that means tricyclazole and thiamethoxam. For groundnuts, aflatoxin B1.
• Get the paperwork exactly right for Annex II products: certificate, lab report with sampling details, and the same identification code on every bag.
• Target the specific line. India's groundnut and vegetable rates are high while its rice rate is below China's. A national campaign that treats all exports alike wastes effort. Export bodies can use the rates to decide which sectors need a residue programme first.

Pitfalls

• Raw count vs rate. Pakistan has more rice rejections than India (151 against 106) but a lower rate (52.8 against 62.1).
• The 5-rejection floor. No rate is shown below five rejections. India's pistachio page has one rejection and no rate. That means too few cases to judge, not a clean record.
• Recent periods are incomplete. India's 91 rejections for 2026 cover less than nine months, against 178 for all of 2025. The current quarter is still filling.
• Multi-origin notifications. A notification can name several countries, and it counts for each. 36 of India's 880 notifications in the period name more than one origin. Peru's alert list includes ethylene oxide in black beans from Madagascar and a colouring in paprika from China, both tagged with Peru as well. Read the subject before you quote a case.

Set up a watch

To hear about new notifications for your origin without checking by hand, set up a watch. You get at most one email a week, and only when something matches.