Product Recall Monitor — CPSC, FDA & NHTSA

Monitor US product, food, drug, medical device and vehicle recalls from three government agencies in a single run. This actor queries the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission), openFDA (food, drug and device enforcement), and NHTSA (vehicle safety) recall APIs, normalizes every notice into one clean schema, removes duplicates, and lets you filter by brand/company name, UPC, and a "since" date so you only see what's new. All data comes from public, official government APIs — no logins, no scraping, no proxies.

Stop babysitting three separate government feeds. Point this actor at the brands in your catalog or portfolio and get a single, deduped recall list you can schedule, export, or wire into Slack, a sheet, or your own system.

Why use the Product Recall Monitor?

• One feed instead of three. CPSC, FDA and NHTSA each publish recalls in different formats. This actor merges them into a single normalized table.
• Brand & UPC matching. Fuzzy company-name matching handles Inc., LLC, punctuation and minor spelling differences, so "Fisher Price" matches "Fisher-Price, Inc." Filter by UPC to catch a specific SKU.
• "Since last run" delta mode. Set sinceDate to your last check and get only new recalls — perfect for a scheduled compliance monitor.
• Deduplicated. Notices that overlap across agencies or repeat within a feed collapse into one record, with the other agencies listed under alsoReportedBy.
• Built for compliance & risk teams. Retailers, marketplace sellers, product-liability firms and insurance underwriters can watch their catalog or portfolio without manual API work.

Run it on the Apify platform to get scheduling, a REST API, webhooks, and integrations (Slack, Zapier, Make, Google Sheets) for free.

How to use the recall monitor

1. Click Try for free / Start.
2. In the Input tab, add the brands or companies you want to watch (e.g. Peloton, Fisher-Price). Leave it empty to get every recall in the window.
3. Pick which agencies to query. For NHTSA, add one or more vehicles (make + modelYear, and optionally model).
4. Set Since date to how far back you want to look (or use Lookback days).
5. Click Save & Run. When it finishes, open the Output tab or export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML.

To turn it into a monitor, open the Schedule tab, run it daily/weekly, and set sinceDate to only surface new recalls.

Input

Field	Type	Description
agencies	array	Which sources to query: CPSC, FDA, NHTSA. Default: all three.
brands	array	Brand/company names to fuzzy-match (CPSC & FDA). Empty = no brand filter.
upcs	array	UPC/EAN codes to match against product codes (CPSC & FDA).
vehicles	array	NHTSA vehicles, e.g. {"make":"Honda","modelYear":2020} or with a model.
fdaCategories	array	openFDA datasets: food, drug, device.
sinceDate	string	Only recalls on/after this date (YYYY-MM-DD). The delta filter.
untilDate	string	Only recalls on/before this date.
lookbackDays	integer	Used when sinceDate is empty. Default 90.
matchThresholdPercent	integer	Fuzzy-match strictness 0–100. Default 82.
dedupe	boolean	Collapse duplicate notices. Default true.
maxItems	integer	Max records returned, newest first. Default 200.

See the Input tab for the full, documented form.

Output

Every recall becomes a flat, consistent record. Example (trimmed):

{
  "source": "CPSC",
  "sourceCategory": "consumer-product",
  "recallId": "CPSC-24172",
  "recallNumber": "24172",
  "title": "Good Earth Lighting Recalls Rechargeable Lights Due to Fire and Burn Hazards",
  "description": "The recalled rechargeable lights can overheat, posing fire and burn hazards.",
  "hazard": "Fire; Burn",
  "remedy": "Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled lights.",
  "classification": null,
  "status": null,
  "recallDate": "2024-06-06",
  "company": "Good Earth Lighting Inc., of Mount Prospect, Illinois",
  "companies": ["Good Earth Lighting Inc., of Mount Prospect, Illinois"],
  "brandMatched": "Good Earth Lighting",
  "productNames": ["Good Earth Rechargeable Integrated Lights"],
  "upcs": [],
  "distribution": "Hardware and home improvement stores nationwide, and online",
  "url": "https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2024/...",
  "alsoReportedBy": [],
  "fetchedAt": "2026-07-25T00:00:00.000Z"
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Data fields

Field	Meaning
source	CPSC, FDA or NHTSA
sourceCategory	consumer-product, food, drug, device or vehicle
recallId / recallNumber	Agency-canonical identifiers
title / description	Human-readable summary of the recall
hazard / remedy	What's wrong and what to do
classification	FDA class (I/II/III) or NHTSA component
status	e.g. FDA Ongoing/Terminated, or NHTSA DO NOT DRIVE
recallDate	ISO date the recall was reported
company / companies	Firm(s) responsible
brandMatched	Which of your brand queries matched
productNames / upcs	Affected products and codes
alsoReportedBy	Other agencies that reported the same notice
url	Link to the official recall notice

How much does it cost to monitor recalls?

The actor calls lightweight JSON APIs, so runs are fast and cheap — a typical brand-filtered monitor over a recent window costs only a few Apify compute-unit cents. Cost scales with how many records you scan (wide date windows and many FDA categories cost more). Use sinceDate, maxItems, and maxFdaScanPerCategory to keep runs tight.

Tips & advanced options

• Delta monitoring: schedule daily and set sinceDate to yesterday to only get new recalls.
• Rare brands over long windows: raise maxFdaScanPerCategory so the scan reaches older records.
• Vehicles without a model: omit model to auto-check every model with recalls for that make/year (capped by maxNhtsaModelsPerQuery).
• Looser/stricter matching: lower matchThresholdPercent to catch more name variants, raise it to reduce false positives.

FAQ, disclaimers & support

Is this legal? Yes. CPSC, openFDA and NHTSA publish these recalls as open government data. This actor only reads official public APIs — no authentication, no scraping behind logins, no personal data.

How fresh is the data? As fresh as the agencies publish it. openFDA updates enforcement reports on a rolling basis; CPSC and NHTSA update as notices are issued.

Why is NHTSA empty? NHTSA is keyed by vehicle. You must add vehicles (make + modelYear) for it to return anything.

Rate limits? openFDA allows generous anonymous access; add an fdaApiKey for higher limits on very large runs.

Accuracy disclaimer: Recall data is provided by third-party government sources and may be incomplete or delayed. Always confirm against the official agency notice (linked in url) before acting.

Found a bug or need another source (e.g. USDA/FSIS, Health Canada)? Open an issue on the Issues tab — feedback is welcome, and custom versions are available.

Related actors

• Web Scraper — general-purpose scraping when you need a custom source.
• Google Sheets Import/Export — push recall results straight into a spreadsheet.
• Send Slack Message — get recall alerts in Slack.

Useful links

• openFDA enforcement API · CPSC Recalls API · NHTSA Recalls API

Changelog

0.1

• Initial release: CPSC + openFDA (food/drug/device) + NHTSA in one run, normalized schema, cross-source dedup, fuzzy brand matching, UPC filter, and sinceDate delta mode.