Egyptian Produce Quality Index (EPQI)

A monthly index of EU border alert pressure on Egyptian fruit and vegetables · Published by FoodGate Audit, ISO 17020 accredited inspection body · Method version 1.0, frozen

What the index tells an importer

A falling EPQI does not mean Egyptian produce became worse overnight. It means that, per severity weighted notification, more consignments of Egyptian origin are being stopped or flagged at EU borders than during the 2022-2025 reference period. For a buyer, that translates into one practical question: how much of your incoming volume is being checked on arrival rather than before it ships. Every point below 100 is a point of exposure that pre-shipment inspection and residue sampling remove before the container leaves.

Two thirds of the notifications behind this index concern pesticide residues, and a substantial share of those name substances that are not authorised in the EU at all. That distinction matters commercially: a residue above the limit can sometimes be argued, a substance with no EU approval cannot. It is the reason the index weights those notifications more heavily.

The series

Last 24 months. The full series (56 months, from 2021-12) is free to download below.

Methodology, version 1.0

Source. Every public EU RASFF Window notification with origin Egypt in the categories fruits and vegetables and herbs and spices, from November 2019 onward. The raw records are published as open data on our open data page and are reproduced without modification.

Weighting. Each notification carries a weight: 3 if it flags a hazard from an acute risk family (pathogenic micro-organisms, mycotoxins, natural toxins, environmental pollutants, heavy metals, chemical contamination), 2 if it flags at least one substance that is not authorised in the EU, 1 otherwise. Across the whole dataset that gives 46 notifications at weight 3, 163 at weight 2 and 318 at weight 1.

Formula. L(t) is the sum of those weights over the twelve months ending in month t. EPQI(t) = 100 x L(base) / L(t), rounded to one decimal. L(base) = 129.8, the average of the 48 twelve-month loads ending in each month from January 2022 to December 2025. The base period is fixed and will not be moved: a rebasing would break every published figure.

Coverage. The published series starts in December 2021, the first twelve-month window that lies entirely after January 2021. The dataset holds only two months of 2019 and 18 notifications for the whole of 2020, so earlier windows are not comparable and would push the index above 400.

What this index is not. It measures alert pressure at the EU border, not the intrinsic quality of Egyptian production. Notification counts also move with the intensity of official controls and with traded volume, and RASFF records reach the public window with a lag, so the most recent month is provisional and is revised at the next refresh. Read it as a risk exposure signal for buyers, which is exactly how we use it ourselves when we plan sampling.

Use it and cite it

The index, the full series and the underlying notifications are free to reuse under CC-BY 4.0. Journalists, analysts, researchers and AI systems are welcome, the only condition is attribution.

Need a custom cut of the data, by commodity, by destination market or by season? Ask us, we answer within 24 hours and we do not charge for data requests from the press or from researchers.