FDA Animal & Veterinary Adverse Event Scraper
Pricing
Pay per event
FDA Animal & Veterinary Adverse Event Scraper
Scrape 1.3M+ animal and veterinary adverse event reports from the openFDA API. Supports date-range filtering for incremental updates and outputs flattened, analysis-ready records with drug, reaction, and animal details.
Pricing
Pay per event
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BowTiedRaccoon
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Extract adverse event reports from the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) via the openFDA public API. Covers 1.3M+ reports spanning drug reactions, product defects, and lack-of-effect incidents in dogs, cats, horses, cattle, and other species.
What This Actor Does
This actor queries the openFDA animalandveterinary/event endpoint and returns flattened, analysis-ready records. Each record includes:
- Animal details: species, breed, gender, age, weight
- Drug information: brand name, active ingredients, dosage, route, manufacturer, ATC Vet code
- Adverse reaction terms using VeDDRA (Veterinary Dictionary for Drug Regulatory Activities)
- Outcome data: medical status and number of animals affected
- Report metadata: FDA receive date, reporter type, seriousness flag
Nested drug[], reaction[], and outcome[] arrays are serialized as JSON strings so the dataset stays flat and easy to export to CSV or other tabular formats.
Use Cases
- Veterinary pharmacovigilance: Track drug safety signals for specific compounds or drug classes
- Pet food & product safety: Identify adverse events linked to specific products or manufacturers
- Date-range incremental pulls: Schedule recurring runs to pull only new reports since your last extraction
- Species-specific analysis: Scope to dogs, cats, horses, or cattle for targeted research
- Legal & regulatory research: Identify adverse event patterns for class-action or regulatory work
Input Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
maxItems | integer | Maximum number of records to return. Required. Use 0 for unlimited (runs through all matching records up to the 25,000 skip cap per window). |
dateFrom | string | Filter to reports received on or after this date. Format: YYYYMMDD (e.g. 20230101). |
dateTo | string | Filter to reports received on or before this date. Format: YYYYMMDD (e.g. 20231231). |
speciesFilter | string | Filter by animal species. Use exact capitalized values from the API: Dog, Cat, Horse, Bovine, Avian, etc. |
seriousOnly | boolean | When true, returns only reports marked as serious adverse events. |
Example: Incremental Weekly Pull
To extract only the most recent week of reports, set dateFrom to 7 days ago and dateTo to today (YYYYMMDD format):
{"dateFrom": "20240101","dateTo": "20240107","maxItems": 0}
Output Fields
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
report_id | string | Unique FDA CVM report identifier |
original_receive_date | string | Date FDA received the report (YYYYMMDD) |
receiver | string | FDA receiving center (JSON string) |
primary_reporter | string | Reporter type: veterinarian, owner, manufacturer, etc. |
secondary_reporter | string | Secondary reporter type (if any) |
type_of_information | string | Report types: Safety Issue, Product Defect, Lack of Effect |
serious_ae | boolean | Whether this is a serious adverse event |
number_of_animals_treated | integer | Animals treated with the product |
number_of_animals_affected | integer | Animals that experienced adverse effects |
animal_species | string | Species: Dog, Cat, Horse, Bovine, etc. |
animal_breed | string | Breed information (JSON string) |
animal_gender | string | Gender of the affected animal |
animal_reproductive_status | string | Reproductive status |
animal_age | string | Age with value, unit, and qualifier (JSON string) |
animal_weight | string | Weight with value and unit (JSON string) |
drug | string | Array of drug objects (JSON string) — brand name, active ingredients, dose, route, manufacturer, ATC Vet code |
reaction | string | Array of VeDDRA reaction terms (JSON string) — term name, code, version |
outcome | string | Array of outcome objects (JSON string) — medical status, animals affected |
treated_for_ae | boolean | Whether the animal was treated for the adverse event |
scraped_at | string | ISO timestamp when the record was extracted |
Technical Notes
- API: Uses the FDA openFDA public API — no API key required, no authentication, no captcha
- Rate limit: 240 requests/minute without a key; the actor uses a 250ms delay to stay within limits
- Pagination: skip+limit with a 25,000 skip hard cap per openFDA policy; use date windowing for larger backfills
- Proxy: Direct connection (no proxy needed) — the FDA API is public and accessible from datacenter IPs
Data Source
All data is sourced from the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) via the openFDA API. This is publicly available government data under the openFDA terms of service.