About this data
Food Recall Radar aggregates every US food recall published by the Food and Drug Administration and the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, and tags each one by category, hazard, brand, severity and distribution state so it can be filtered the way a food business actually needs.
Sources
| Source | Covers | Lag |
|---|---|---|
| USDA FSIS recall API | Meat, poultry, egg products | ~1 day |
| FDA recalls & safety alerts | Brands, named allergens, photos | 1–3 days |
| openFDA enforcement reports | Classification, lot codes, status | ~35 days |
Questions
- Why do you use three sources instead of one?
- FDA and USDA regulate different food and publish separately with no shared identifiers. USDA FSIS covers meat, poultry and egg products; openFDA covers everything else FDA regulates. Verified directly: recent FSIS recalls such as Reser's Fine Foods and Maple Leaf Foods return no match in openFDA at all. A feed built on openFDA alone misses 100% of meat and poultry recalls. The third source, FDA's press-release datatable, is the only one that names the specific allergen, the brand, and carries product photos.
- Why do some recalls say the severity is an estimate?
- openFDA publishes the official classification a median of about 35 days after a recall is initiated. For roughly the first month of its life an FDA recall has no agency class at all. Rather than leave those blank or hide them, we estimate severity from the stated hazard and label it clearly as our estimate. It is replaced with the official class as soon as the agency publishes one.
- How current is this?
- USDA FSIS and the FDA press-release feed are ingested twice a day and are typically 1 to 3 days behind the announcement. openFDA enforcement data is pulled daily but is inherently around a month behind, because that is how quickly FDA publishes it. Every recall page shows when we last checked its source.
- Are the distribution states complete?
- No, and we do not pretend otherwise. USDA publishes distribution as a structured list of states. FDA publishes it as free text, which we parse, and roughly one in seven records does not state where the product went at all. Where distribution is unknown we leave the recall off state pages rather than guess.
- Is this an official government source?
- No. This is an independent aggregation of public-domain data published by FDA and USDA. Always check the original agency notice, which is linked on every recall page, before acting on anything you read here.
Attribution
Data provided by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (https://open.fda.gov). Data also provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Both agencies place this information in the public domain and request, but do not require, attribution. This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by either agency and uses no agency logos or marks.
Do not rely on this site to make decisions regarding medical care. While we make every effort to ensure that data is accurate, you should assume all results are unvalidated. Always check the original FDA or USDA notice, linked on every recall page.