---
title: "From 255 RASFF alerts, Salmonella still wears the crown"
author: codebuddy
type: article
series: enforcement-recalls
desc: "Seven years of EU pet-food hazard notifications — Salmonella owns 38.8%, and the trend is not flattening."
source_topics: RASFF_petfood_salmonella, RASFF_petfood_year_by_year, RASFF_petfood_hazard_categories_by_subject_keyword, RASFF_petfood_classification_decoded, RASFF_petfood_risk_severity_by_year, CN_salmonella_zero_tolerance, jp-microbial_004
date: 2026-07-30
---

# From 255 RASFF alerts, Salmonella still wears the crown

If you wanted a single number to sum up what goes wrong in pet food
across the EU and its trading partners, it would be this: of **255
pet-food notifications** logged in the EU's Rapid Alert System for Food
and Feed (RASFF) between June 2019 and July 2026, **99 — 38.8% —**
mention *Salmonella* in the subject line. No other hazard comes close.

This article is built entirely from the project's RASFF pet-food
snapshot (`rasff-petfood-20260719.json`, 255 records, extracted
2026-07-19). A calibration note up front, because the data demands it:
the dataset is a **point-in-time snapshot with no incremental updates
since 2026-07-19**, and several of the underlying topic files carry
`needs_review: true`. The RASFF feed provides **no structured `hazards`
array** — every hazard figure below is derived by case-insensitive
substring matching on the free-text `subject` field, so categories are
broad and intentionally non-exclusive (a single notification can land in
several). Treat the percentages as well-grounded estimates from one
snapshot, not a live dashboard.

## Salmonella: still the dominant hazard

Salmonella is "by far the leading hazard in RASFF pet food
notifications: **99 of 255 records (38.8%)** mention Salmonella in the
`subject` field." The runner-up is *Enterobacteriaceae* at 37 records
(14.5%), then "additive" (unauthorized additives or composition issues)
at 20 records (7.8%). Salmonella shows up in notifications across every
classification and every year since 2019.

Its single-year peak was **21 cases in 2023**, out of that year's 36
total — a 58.3% share, the highest single-year rate in the dataset. The
year-by-year Salmonella burden runs: 2019 = 3, 2020 = 10, 2021 = 13,
2022 = 16, **2023 = 21**, 2024 = 16, 2025 = 16, 2026 = 4 (year to date).
The 2023 spike is "mostly driven by raw pet food and dog chew
contamination."

## The seven-year volume curve

Total pet-food notifications per calendar year (year taken from
`ecValidationDate`):

- 2019: **5**
- 2020: **27**
- 2021: **31**
- 2022: **45**
- 2023: **36**
- 2024: **46** ← peak
- 2025: **40**
- 2026: **25** (year-to-date, partial coverage through 2026-07)

The 2020 jump from 5 → 27 "coincides with the pet adoption surge and EU
regulatory tightening of microbiological criteria under Reg 2019/626,"
which entered application on 2021-03-21. The 2024 peak of 46 reflects
"increased post-COVID surveillance plus expanded categories tracked by
RASFF." The 2026 partial count (25 through July) "projects to ~40–45 if
the second half matches typical yearly patterns."

## What else shows up

Beyond Salmonella, the hazard structure for the 255 records breaks down
as:

- **Microbiological — Salmonella:** 99 (38.8%)
- **Microbiological — Enterobacteriaceae:** 37 (14.5%)
- **Physical — all combined** (plastic, glass, metal, foreign body): 19
  (7.5%) — of which plastic 8, foreign body 5, metal 4, glass 2
- **Chemical — heavy metals** (lead, cadmium, mercury): 4 (1.6%)
- **Chemical — dioxin/PCB:** 2 (0.8%)
- **Chemical — vitamins/minerals:** 3 (1.2%)
- **Unclassified** (no hazard keyword matched): **95 (37.3%)**

Microbiological hazards overall account for **136 of 255 (53.3%)**. The
large "Unclassified" group (95) is an honesty check, not a gap to paper
over: its subjects include "unauthorised substance," "additive,"
"non-compliance," and packaging defects that are reportable but not
hazard-descriptive.

## How serious, and how open

RASFF splits notifications into four classifications: **Information
notification for follow-up 113 (44.3%)**, **Alert notification 68
(26.7%)**, **Border rejection notification 46 (18.0%)**, and
**Information notification for attention 28 (11.0%)**. Alerts are where
the teeth are — of the 68 alerts, **54 (79.4%) are "serious."** Border
rejections are the only class carrying "no risk" findings (7 of 46).

Severity over time (serious + potentially serious share) peaked at
**47.2% in 2023**, the year RASFF introduced the "potentially serious"
and "potential risk" tiers and the "undecided" backlog dropped from 6
(2022) to 1 (2023) — a sign the system tightened its call. One more
transparency point: only **19 of 255 (7.5%)** records are
`published=true` on the public portal; the rest are visible only via the
backend search API.

## The regulatory floor outside the EU

The numbers explain why jurisdictions set a hard line on Salmonella. In
China, requirements sit in the hygiene tables of **GB/T 31216-2014 (dog)
and GB/T 31217-2014 (cat): *Salmonella* must be "not found" in a 25 g
sample**, tested per GB/T 13091. Japan's MAFF has gone public with an
alert to manufacturers and sellers: *Salmonella* spp. "is being detected
in pet food distributed in Japan (domestic, jerky etc.)," it can "cause
diarrhea in dogs and cats," and is "very dangerous" for puppies, kittens
and weakened animals — pointing at under-cleaned equipment, insufficient
heat-drying, and unhygienic post-drying handling as the likely causes.

## Why this matters

For a brand shipping across borders, the lesson is blunt: Salmonella is
not a one-year blip but a structural, seven-year constant at the top of
the hazard list, and raw pet food plus dog chews are its favorite
vehicles. The 2024 volume peak and the 2023 severity peak suggest
regulators are looking harder, not relaxing. The 37.3% unclassified share
is a reminder that the public picture of pet-food risk is itself
incomplete — exactly the kind of gap a monitoring upgrade (see the
project's D5 RASFF incremental-monitoring batch) is meant to close.

---

*Sources: project RASFF topics `RASFF_petfood_salmonella`,
`RASFF_petfood_year_by_year`, `RASFF_petfood_hazard_categories_by_subject_keyword`,
`RASFF_petfood_classification_decoded`, `RASFF_petfood_risk_severity_by_year`
(snapshot `rasff-petfood-20260719.json`, 255 records, 2026-07-19; method
per Reg 2019/626, eur-lex CELEX:32019R0626); `CN_salmonella_zero_tolerance`
(GB/T 31216/31217-2014); `jp-microbial_004` (Japan MAFF pet-food Salmonella
alert). Hazard figures are subject-substring inferences on a point-in-time
snapshot with no incremental updates; several source topics carry
`needs_review: true`.*