💊 FDA Recalls Scraper

Scrape FDA recall / enforcement reports for food, drugs or medical devices — recall number, classification, status, product description, reason for recall, recalling firm, distribution, quantity, dates and location. Powered by the public openFDA API, so it's fast and reliable: no browser, no login, no API key.

Built for product-safety monitoring, compliance, supply-chain risk and research. Export to JSON/CSV/Excel, run on a schedule, call via API, or connect to Make, Zapier or n8n.

🔎 What is the FDA Recalls Scraper?

Choose a dataset (food, drug or device recalls), optionally filter by keyword or classification, and it returns matching recall reports as structured rows — so you can monitor what's being recalled and why, in real time.

What data does it extract?

• Recall number, status and classification (Class I/II/III)
• Product description and reason for recall
• Recalling firm, brand and manufacturer
• Distribution pattern and product quantity
• Code info and voluntary/mandated flag
• Initiation / report / termination dates
• City, state and country

⬇️ Input

Field	Type	Description
dataset	string	food-recalls, drug-recalls or device-recalls.
search	string	Optional keyword/firm, e.g. salmonella.
classification	string	Optional class, e.g. Class I.
maxResults	integer	Max recalls to return. Default 50.

Example input

{
  "dataset": "food-recalls",
  "search": "listeria",
  "maxResults": 100
}

⬆️ Output

One record per recall:

{
  "recall_number": "F-1234-2026",
  "product_type": "Food",
  "status": "Ongoing",
  "classification": "Class I",
  "product_description": "Brand X frozen vegetables, 12 oz bag",
  "reason_for_recall": "Potential Listeria monocytogenes contamination",
  "recalling_firm": "Acme Foods Inc.",
  "brand_name": "Brand X",
  "distribution_pattern": "Nationwide",
  "product_quantity": "10,500 cases",
  "voluntary_mandated": "Voluntary: Firm initiated",
  "recall_initiation_date": "20260415",
  "report_date": "20260501",
  "city": "Springfield",
  "state": "IL",
  "country": "United States",
  "query": "listeria"
}

💡 Use cases

• 🛡️ Product-safety monitoring — watch recalls in your category in real time.
• ✅ Compliance — keep a record of relevant recalls for audits.
• 🔗 Supply-chain risk — flag recalls from suppliers and brands you rely on.
• 🤖 Automation — push new recalls to Slack/email via Make/Zapier/n8n.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an API key or login? No — it uses the public openFDA API.

Food, drugs and devices? Yes — set dataset.

Can I filter by reason or firm? Yes — use search.

What are Class I/II/III? FDA severity classes — Class I is the most serious.

Are dates included? Yes — initiation, report and termination dates.

How does pricing work? Pay per recall returned. No subscription.

Is it legal? openFDA is public US government data. Use responsibly and within openFDA's terms.

⚙️ How it works

The scraper calls the openFDA enforcement endpoints directly and returns clean rows — no browser and no key. It paginates through results, normalizing each recall into consistent fields (classification, reason, firm, dates, location) so you get a tidy table. Runs are fast and dependable, which is why the actor keeps passing its daily health check. The same input shape works for a quick check or a full historical pull — only maxResults changes.

👥 Who uses FDA recall data?

Recall data is valuable to quality and compliance teams, retailers, importers, insurers and researchers. A grocery chain watches food recalls in its categories; a pharmacy monitors drug recalls; an importer tracks device recalls from its suppliers; a researcher studies recall trends over time. Because every record is plain JSON with consistent fields, it drops straight into a spreadsheet, database, BI tool or alerting workflow with no custom parsing.

📤 Export, schedule & integrate

Every run is saved to a dataset you can export to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or RSS, or pull through the Apify API. Wire it into Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack or your own database, run it on a schedule (hourly, daily or weekly) to catch new recalls, and call it from AI agents through the Apify MCP server.

💡 Tips for best results

• Run all three datasets to cover food, drugs and devices.
• Filter by classification: Class I to focus on the most serious recalls.
• Schedule a daily run and diff the output to get a recall alert feed.
• Use search with a supplier or brand name to monitor your supply chain.

❓ More FAQ

How fresh is the data? It is fetched live on each run — schedule runs to catch new recalls.

Can I get more results? Yes — raise maxResults; it paginates automatically.

Can I run it automatically? Yes — use Apify Schedules (cron).

Which export formats? JSON, CSV, Excel, XML and RSS, plus the Apify API.

Can AI agents use it? Yes — via the Apify API and MCP server.

🔗 You might also like

• PubMed Papers Scraper — biomedical citations.
• SEC EDGAR Filings Scraper — company filings.
• Food Product Scraper — barcode & nutrition data.

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