In 2025 the Food and Drug Administration refused 35,686 import lines at the United States border, the most in any year since 2011.
Every shipment line the agency turned away since January 2002, with the statutory charge that stopped it: 525,457 refusals of goods from 207 countries, under 279 different charges. One row is one refused line on an entry, not one container. The most common food charge, number 249, reads in part: the article "appears to consist in whole or in part of a filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance." It has been cited 39,779 times.
Source: Food and Drug Administration Data Dashboard import refusals · charge text from the agency's own crosswalk · Method
Built with AI assistance from FDA's own API and charge-code crosswalk. Charge text is quoted verbatim from FDA. A refusal is an FDA decision about a shipment's appearance of violation, not a court finding.