1. Food Alert Atlas
  2. How it works

How Food Alert Atlas works

Food Alert Atlas is built from the public list of notifications in the European Commission's RASFF Window. This page explains what is counted, how each sentence is made, and what the site cannot tell you.

Where does the data come from?

RASFF, the EU's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed, exists under Article 50 of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002. The Commission publishes a summary of each notification in RASFF Window, which it says covers 2020 and later. The site reads the public list of notifications once a day, 33,043 of them dated from 1 January 2020 to 8 November 2026, and uses only these fields: reference, date validated, notifying country, countries of origin, product category, notification type, risk decision and the subject line. Detail records, which name officials, are never read.

How is each sentence made?

The subject line is free text written by the notifying country, and now and then it carries a brand or a company name. So it is never shown. It is matched against our own list of 436 findings in 13 groups and against short lists of product words; the sentence uses only the names from those lists, the Commission's product category, the countries and the type and risk decision. The word list matched 96% of notifications since 2020 (31,702 of 33,043); the other 1,341 count as other finding. A notification can name several findings and several origins, and counts once for each.

  • Mould toxins: 3,828 notifications
  • Bacteria, viruses and parasites: 8,158 notifications
  • Pesticide residues: 6,723 notifications
  • Heavy metals: 1,422 notifications
  • Natural plant and marine toxins: 1,221 notifications
  • Process and environmental contaminants: 954 notifications
  • Undeclared allergens: 1,493 notifications
  • Additives and colours: 1,598 notifications
  • Unauthorised substances and novel food: 2,394 notifications
  • Veterinary medicine residues: 338 notifications
  • Food contact materials: 1,125 notifications
  • Foreign bodies, pests and spoilage: 1,935 notifications
  • Documents, controls and labelling: 2,334 notifications
  • Other finding: 1,341 notifications

What do the notification types mean?

The definitions are in Article 2 of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1715. An alert notification is about a serious risk that needs or may need rapid action in another member country. An information notification is about a risk that does not need rapid action; for follow up when the product may be on the market of another member, for attention when it is only in the notifying country or not, or no longer, on the market. A border rejection notification is about a batch, container or cargo refused at the EU border because of a risk. See the answer on notification types.

What does the risk decision mean?

Each notification carries the notifying country's risk decision, checked by the Commission. The network's procedures list no risk, potential risk, not serious, potentially serious and serious; older records also use undecided. See the answer on risk decisions.

How fresh is it?

The list is read once a day for notifications validated in the last three weeks, so corrections to recent ones are picked up. Older corrections and withdrawals may lag. The data on this site was read on 8 November 2026.

What can the site not tell you?

  • Which company was involved: RASFF Window does not publish it, and neither does this site.
  • Whether a product is safe per tonne shipped: counts are not adjusted for trade volumes.
  • The measured level, the legal limit or the measures taken for each notification: those are in the official record behind each reference.

Reuse and attribution

RASFF Window content is © European Union, 1995 to 2026, and the Commission's legal notice says its content is licensed under CC BY 4.0, which allows reuse with credit and an indication of changes. Under Article 6 of Commission Decision 2011/833/EU a reuser must acknowledge the source and not distort the meaning, and the Commission accepts no liability for the reuse. Changes made here: records are filtered from 2020, matched to our word lists, counted, grouped and reworded. Food Alert Atlas is not affiliated with or endorsed by the European Commission.

Sources