Food Safety Inspection & Recall Tracker

Track FDA food recalls, enforcement actions, and safety alerts with structured data from the openFDA enforcement database. This actor pulls product details, recall classification, reason for recall, distribution scope, and company information directly from the official FDA enforcement reports API.

What does Food Safety Tracker do?

The Food Safety Tracker actor queries the openFDA food enforcement API to retrieve recall and enforcement action data. It supports filtering by product or ingredient keyword, recalling company name, and recall classification severity (Class I through Class III). Results are paginated automatically, collecting up to 2,000 records per run with full recall metadata.

Each record includes the recall number, recalling firm name and location, detailed product description, reason for recall, FDA classification level, current recall status, geographic distribution pattern, product quantity, and whether the recall was voluntary or FDA-mandated.

Key Use Cases

Food Distributor Supplier Screening — Distributors and retailers can monitor their supplier base for active recalls, screening for companies with recurring Class I violations that may pose ongoing food safety risks to their supply chain.

Restaurant Chain Compliance — Multi-location restaurant operators can track ingredient-level recalls across their supply chain, matching recalled products against purchasing records to ensure rapid response and regulatory compliance.

Insurance Risk Assessment — Underwriters and actuaries in the food industry insurance sector can build risk profiles for companies based on their recall history, classification severity, and repeat violation patterns to inform coverage decisions and premium pricing.

Food Safety Consulting — Consultants and auditors can aggregate recall data across categories, regions, and time periods to identify industry-wide trends, emerging contamination risks, and seasonal patterns in enforcement actions.

Regulatory Research — Policy researchers and public health analysts can use structured recall data to study FDA enforcement patterns, evaluate the effectiveness of food safety regulations, and identify gaps in the regulatory framework.

Input Options

• Search Query — Free-text search across product descriptions, ingredients, and reasons for recall (e.g., "salmonella", "undeclared allergen", "listeria").
• Recalling Firm — Filter by company name to build a recall history profile for a specific manufacturer or brand.
• Classification — Filter by severity: Class I (most serious, reasonable probability of health consequences or death), Class II (moderate risk), or Class III (least serious, unlikely to cause adverse health effects).
• Max Results — Control the number of records returned (1 to 2,000).

Output

Each result contains the recall number, recalling firm, city, state, product description, reason for recall, classification, status, distribution pattern, recall initiation date, report date, product quantity, voluntary or mandated status, a direct API URL for the record, and a timestamp. Data is structured for direct integration with compliance dashboards, risk scoring systems, or further analytical processing.

Example input

{
  "query": "salmonella",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Example output

{
  "source": "openFDA",
  "recallNumber": "F-0123-2024",
  "recallingFirm": "Acme Foods Inc",
  "city": "Chicago",
  "state": "IL",
  "productDescription": "Frozen chicken tenders, 2 lb bags, UPC 012345678901",
  "reasonForRecall": "Salmonella contamination detected during routine testing",
  "classification": "Class I",
  "status": "Ongoing",
  "distributionPattern": "Nationwide",
  "recallDate": "2024-08-12",
  "reportDate": "2024-08-15",
  "quantity": "15,000 cases",
  "voluntaryMandated": "Voluntary",
  "url": "https://api.fda.gov/food/enforcement.json?search=recall_number:F-0123-2024",
  "scrapedAt": "2025-01-15T10:30:00.000Z"
}

Pricing

• $0.35 per actor start
• $0.03 per result record

The openFDA API is free and does not require authentication, though rate limits of 240 requests per minute apply for unauthenticated access.