Product categories and hazard categories in the RASFF notifications: dependences between chosen variables

Abstract

The paper examined if there was any dependence between product and hazard categories in the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed notifications in 2008-2015 using the cluster analysis. It also analysed which the dependences between particular product and hazard categories took into consideration the type of notifications and also other variables, i.e. year, notifying country, notification basis, risk decision, distribution status and action taken using scatterplots. It was noticed that the notifications were most frequently related to: pathogenic micro-organisms in meat and meat products (other than poultry), poultry meat and poultry meat products and heavy metals in fish and fish products (for alert notifications), pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables (for information notifications) and mycotoxins in nuts, nut products and seeds and pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables (for border rejections, which were almost half of the notifications). However, these categories were not always most frequen...