Canada Recall Alerts

One unified feed of all Government of Canada recalls and safety alerts — food, health products, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, motor vehicles, and cannabis — from the official Health Canada / CFIA open-data feed. Updated daily, zero scraping required.

What it does

Streams the Government of Canada's daily-updated CSV export of every recall and safety alert ever issued, filters by category, date range, and optional keywords, and returns structured records — newest first.

Categories covered:

Code	Description	Issuing body
FOOD	Food recalls (e.g. allergens, pathogens, foreign objects)	CFIA
VEHICLE	Motor vehicle safety defects and recalls	Transport Canada
HEALTH	Health products, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices	Health Canada
CPS	Consumer product safety (household goods, children's products, etc.)	Health Canada
CANNABIS	Cannabis and cannabis-derivative recalls	Health Canada

Primary use cases: food safety monitoring, consumer product intelligence, brand-mention alerts in recall notices, insurance risk scoring, AI safety agents, regulatory compliance tracking, recall notification services, supply chain risk management, media and PR monitoring.

Data source and licence

• Source: Health Canada and Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)
• Dataset: Recalls and Safety Alerts open data
• Licence: Open Government Licence – Canada — permits copying, redistribution, and commercial use with attribution.
• Update frequency: Daily
• Coverage: ~33,800 records (active + archived) across all categories from the mid-1990s to present

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
categories	string[]	[] (all)	Category codes to include: FOOD, VEHICLE, HEALTH, CPS, CANNABIS. Leave empty for all.
recalledAfter	date	null	Only recalls published on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
recalledBefore	date	null	Only recalls published on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
keywords	string	null	Comma-separated keywords matched against title, product name, and hazard description (case-insensitive).
maxRecords	integer	500	Maximum total records to return (min 1, max 50,000).
includeArchived	boolean	false	Also return archived (resolved) recalls. Default is active recalls only.

Example — food recalls in the last 30 days

{
  "categories": ["FOOD"],
  "recalledAfter": "2026-06-20",
  "maxRecords": 200
}

Example — allergen and pathogen monitoring

{
  "categories": ["FOOD"],
  "keywords": "listeria, salmonella, peanut, allergen, undeclared",
  "maxRecords": 500
}

Example — all active Class 1 food and health recalls this year

{
  "categories": ["FOOD", "HEALTH"],
  "recalledAfter": "2026-01-01",
  "maxRecords": 2000
}

Example — brand monitoring (e.g. supplier due-diligence)

{
  "keywords": "amara, nestlé, kraft",
  "includeArchived": true,
  "maxRecords": 500
}

Output

Each record in the dataset:

{
  "recallId": "76771",
  "title": "Amara brand Organic Smoothie Melts – Carrot Raspberry recalled due to plastic pieces",
  "category": "FOOD",
  "recallDate": "2021-10-29",
  "product": "Organic Smoothie Melts – Carrot Raspberry",
  "hazardDescription": "Potential presence of plastic fragments",
  "recallClassification": "Class 3",
  "distributionScope": null,
  "status": "active",
  "authority": "Canadian Food Inspection Agency",
  "sourceUrl": "https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/amara-brand-organic-smoothie-melts-carrot-raspberry-recalled-due-plastic-pieces",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-07-20T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Field reference

Field	Description
recallId	Government of Canada recall identifier (NID)
title	Full recall title (English)
category	Standardised category code: FOOD, VEHICLE, HEALTH, CPS, CANNABIS, or OTHER
recallDate	Date the recall was last updated / published (ISO 8601)
product	Product name or description
hazardDescription	Hazard or issue description (e.g. "Listeria monocytogenes", "fire risk")
recallClassification	Class I / II / III for food; Type I / II / III for medical devices; blank for others
distributionScope	Geographic distribution scope — not available in open-data CSV (null)
status	"active" or "archived"
authority	Issuing authority (e.g. "Canadian Food Inspection Agency", "Health Canada", "Transport Canada")
sourceUrl	Direct URL to the recall detail page on recalls-rappels.canada.ca
fetchedAt	ISO 8601 timestamp of when this record was fetched

A RUN_SUMMARY key in the key-value store is written at the end of each run with totals and input parameters.

Recall classification guide

Food (CFIA):

• Class 1 — Reasonably likely to cause serious adverse health consequences or death
• Class 2 — May cause temporary adverse health consequences; serious consequences unlikely
• Class 3 — Unlikely to cause adverse health consequences

Medical devices (Health Canada):

• Type I — Serious injury or death likely if device continues in use
• Type II — Temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences
• Type III — Unlikely to cause adverse health consequences

Limitations

• No distribution scope in CSV. The geographic distribution field is available only via the individual recall detail API, not the bulk CSV. Set distributionScope to null for all records.
• Last updated date used as recallDate. The CSV does not include an original publication date — the "Last updated" field is used, which reflects the most recent update to the recall notice (usually the same as the original date for new recalls).
• English only. The CSV endpoint returns English titles and descriptions. French data is available at the same endpoint with /fr/ URLs.

Attribution

Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.

Data sourced from the Health Canada / CFIA Recalls and Safety Alerts open dataset.