As of January 1, 207,655 food facilities registered with FDA, according to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted by Registrar Corp. Of those registered food facilities, 120,822 were located outside of the United States. The ten countries with the largest number of FDA registered food facilities remained the same in 2016 as those reported in 2015: United States (86,773), Japan (13,941), France (10,450), Italy (10,125), China (9,667), Mexico (9,575), Canada (6,690), Spain (4,688), Republic of Korea (3,921) and India (3,455)

Registrar Corp’s 2016 FOIA request shows a 24 percent increase in registrations since 2015. From 2014 to 2015, however, the firm’s data showed a 14 percent decrease in registrations. According to FDA, there was also a large drop in the number of registered facilities from 2012 to 2013 due to facilities failing to renew their registration during FDA's biennial renewal period.

Registrar Corp says it expects this pattern to continue: an increase in registrations from odd to even years, and a significant decrease from even to odd years. This is because many facilities are unaware of or forget about FDA’s biennial registration renewal requirement, a requirement established under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in 2011.