FDA Recalls & Enforcement Monitor

Know about FDA recalls the week they're published. Point this Actor at product types, recall classes, firms, states, or keywords and get back clean, structured recall records — ready for spreadsheets, alerts, compliance dashboards, LLM pipelines, or your own database.

Built on the FDA's official, free openFDA enforcement API (the same data behind FDA's weekly Enforcement Report). No credentials required, no scraping of third-party sites — this Actor identifies itself to openFDA and stays well inside its published rate limits.

What it does

• Three feeds, one dataset — food (incl. dietary supplements, cosmetics, animal food), human & veterinary drugs, and medical devices, merged and sorted newest-first.
• Filter by what matters — recall class (I/II/III), status (Ongoing/Completed/Terminated/Pending), recalling firm, firm's state, and free-text keywords matched against the product description, reason for recall, and firm name.
• Pick your clock — filter and sort by FDA report date (best for "what's new this week"), recall initiation date, or classification date.
• Each record includes: product type, recall number, event ID, class, status, voluntary/mandated, firm and location, product description, quantity, lot/code info, reason for recall, distribution pattern, all four dates (ISO format), drug brand/generic/NDC when openFDA has them, and a direct link to the primary-source record.

Common uses

• Weekly digest of Class I food recalls for a grocery, restaurant, or food-service compliance team.
• Watch specific manufacturers or suppliers ("Abbott", "Medtronic") across all three feeds.
• Allergen monitoring: keywords like undeclared peanuts, undeclared milk, listeria, salmonella.
• Device-safety tracking for hospitals and clinics (sterility, pump, catheter).
• Feed fresh recalls into a Slack/email alert, a RAG pipeline, or a research workflow.

Input

Field	Meaning
productTypes	Any of food, drug, device. Default: all three.
classifications	Class I, Class II, Class III. Empty = all.
statuses	Ongoing, Completed, Terminated, Pending. Empty = all.
keywords	Phrases matched against product description, reason for recall, and firm. Each keyword is searched separately and tagged on its results.
firms	Recalling-firm names to watch.
states	Two-letter US state codes of the recalling firm's location.
dateField	report_date (default), recall_initiation_date, or center_classification_date — used for both the lookback window and sorting.
lookbackDays	Only recalls whose chosen date is within the last N days (default 30).
maxResults	Cap on returned records — this is what you're billed on.
openFdaApiKey	Optional. Raises openFDA's daily request allowance from 1,000 per IP to 120,000 per key. Only needed for very large or frequent runs; get one free at open.fda.gov.

Running with no input at all returns the last 30 days of recalls across all three feeds (up to 100 records).

Output

One dataset item per recall:

{
  "source": "openFDA enforcement",
  "productType": "Food",
  "recallNumber": "H-1258-2026",
  "eventId": "99571",
  "classification": "Class I",
  "status": "Terminated",
  "voluntaryMandated": "Voluntary: Firm initiated",
  "recallingFirm": "H & U Inc. dba Sun Noodle",
  "city": "Honolulu",
  "state": "HI",
  "country": "United States",
  "postalCode": "96819-3248",
  "productDescription": "Sura Tanmen Hot and Sour Flavor Premium Japanese Noodles & Soup Base. Retail package net wt. 15.4oz ...",
  "productQuantity": "140 packages",
  "codeInfo": "Production Lot: 1226183 ...",
  "reasonForRecall": "Soba sauce packet, which contains bonito, sardine, and mackerel (fish), ... not declared on finished product label.",
  "distributionPattern": "Distribute in HI.",
  "initialFirmNotification": "Two or more of the following: Email, Fax, Letter, Press Release, Telephone, Visit",
  "recallInitiationDate": "2026-08-04",
  "centerClassificationDate": "2026-08-21",
  "reportDate": "2026-09-02",
  "terminationDate": "2026-08-27",
  "brandNames": null,
  "genericNames": null,
  "manufacturerNames": null,
  "productNdc": null,
  "matchedKeyword": null,
  "recordUrl": "https://api.fda.gov/food/enforcement.json?search=recall_number%3A%22H-1258-2026%22"
}

A SUMMARY record in the key-value store lists the window, filters, request count, records fetched per feed, and the total returned.

Pricing

Pay per event: a small charge per run start plus a per-recall-record charge. You control cost directly with maxResults.

Fair use & disclaimers

Data comes from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's openFDA API (FDA Recall Enterprise System, 2004–present, updated weekly). This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the FDA. Per FDA's own disclaimer, openFDA data is unvalidated and must not be relied on for decisions about medical care; FDA does not update a recall's status after classification. This Actor respects openFDA's rate limits (declared User-Agent, throttled requests) and never logs your API key.

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Built and maintained by Anywhere Web Repair (anywherewebrepair.com), with AI-assisted development, human-reviewed.