FDA Supplier Check: Import Alerts & Warning Letters

Find out in one run whether any of your suppliers is on an FDA import alert (Red List or Green List) or has received an FDA warning letter, then keep watching for new listings. Runs read a regularly refreshed copy of the FDA lists; they do not contact FDA.

A clean result is not proof that a supplier is not listed. As of 20-22 Oct 2026, about 49% of Red List entries and about 66% of Green List entries show [individual withheld] instead of a name, and these are never matched to your suppliers. About 46% of FDA's warning letters (letters to individuals, Clinical Investigator and Bioresearch Monitoring letters, and letters to recipients that do not clearly look like a company) are left out on purpose. For a supplier that matters, also look at FDA's own pages.

• Check a supplier list: paste up to 500 company names and get back the FDA import-alert listings and warning letters that match, with the matched name and a match score. No match does not mean a clean record (see above).
• Monitor: schedule it to run regularly; after the first run it returns only records that are new or changed in our copy.
• Export: download the Red/Green List firms in our copy (with products and FDA notes) and the warning letters, filtered by country, alert number or date.

Who it is for

Importers, customs brokers, sourcing and supplier-quality teams, and compliance consultants working with food, seafood, drugs, cosmetics, devices or supplements made outside the US. If a foreign supplier is on a Red List, FDA can detain its shipments without physical examination (DWPE).

Input example

{
  "mode": "check",
  "suppliers": ["Aquastar Food Shanghai", "Eurofins SF Analytical Laboratories", "Acme Seafood Co., Ltd."],
  "sources": ["importAlertsRed", "importAlertsGreen", "warningLetters"],
  "matchThreshold": 0.88
}

Output example (one import-alert listing, trimmed)

{
  "recordType": "importAlertListing",
  "matchedSupplier": "Aquastar Food Shanghai",
  "matchScore": 1,
  "alertNumber": "16-127",
  "alertName": "Detention Without Physical Examination of All Seafood Due to Chloramphenicol",
  "alertType": "DWPE",
  "alertPublishDate": "2026-10-13",
  "list": "red",
  "country": "CHINA",
  "firmName": "Aquastar Food Shanghai Co. Ltd.",
  "firmAddress": "152 Bei Zhao Jia Zhai , Cailu , Pu Dongxin District, Shanghai CHINA",
  "firmDatePublished": "2009-09-16",
  "products": [
    { "productCode": "16 J - - 01", "productDescription": "Crab", "datePublished": "2009-09-16",
      "desc": null, "notes": "DWPE date - 1/24/2008", "problems": "CHLORAMPHENICOL" }
  ],
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_29.html",
  "mirrorDate": "2026-10-14T03:41:00.000Z",
  "mirrorStale": false
}

Output example (one warning letter)

{
  "recordType": "warningLetter",
  "matchedSupplier": "Ocean Pride Seafood",
  "matchScore": 1,
  "companyName": "Ocean Pride Seafood, Inc.",
  "letterIssueDate": "2026-09-11",
  "postedDate": "2026-10-13",
  "issuingOffice": "Human Foods Program",
  "subject": "Seafood HACCP/CGMP for Foods/Adulterated/Insanitary Conditions",
  "letterUrl": "https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/warning-letters/ocean-pride-seafood-inc-730154-09112026",
  "closeoutLetterUrl": null,
  "closeoutLetterDate": null,
  "mirrorDate": "2026-10-14T03:52:00.000Z",
  "mirrorStale": false
}

Field notes:

• products: one entry per product line FDA lists for the firm, in FDA's order, with FDA's own Desc, Notes and Problems text.
• listingCount (import-alert rows): how many FDA entries the row stands for, usually 1. Entries with identical details for withheld individuals, and a firm FDA lists twice with the same list, country and date, are one row (products combined).
• closeoutLetterDate is the date of the close-out letter itself; closeoutPostedDate is when FDA posted it.
• changeType (monitor mode): new or changed.
• mirrorDate is when our copy of that record was last confirmed against FDA: for an import alert, the last refresh that found FDA's alert list still showing the same publish date (or re-read the alert); for warning letters, the last refresh of the letter list. mirrorStale: true means that was more than 72 hours ago (see "How fresh is the data").

Pricing

Pay per result: $10 per 1,000 rows ($0.01 per returned record). A run that finds no matches has no result charge. A check of 100 suppliers that finds 3 matches costs $0.03 in result charges. See the Pricing tab for the exact current price.

How fresh is the data

Your runs never contact FDA. They read a mirror: a copy of the FDA import alerts and warning letters that we refresh regularly, at least every few days. FDA asks automated visitors to wait 30 seconds between requests and to visit its import-alert site only between 03:00 and 09:00 UTC (FDA's "23:00EDT-05:00EDT", which does not shift when US clocks change). The refresh job follows both rules.

• Import alerts: each refresh re-reads new alerts and alerts whose FDA publish date changed; every alert is also re-read about once a week.
• Warning letters: each refresh adds new letters; response and close-out letters that FDA adds to older letters are picked up by a full re-read about once a week.

This is not live data. A change on FDA's site shows up in your results only after the next refresh. Each row shows mirrorDate and mirrorStale. If the mirror cannot be read, the run stops with an error and you can try again later.

As of 20-22 October 2026 the mirror holds 154 import alerts and about 24,100 firm listings, of which about 12,400 are withheld (see Limits). It holds about 2,050 warning letters (2021 onward) out of about 3,760 on FDA's list; the rest are left out (see Limits). These numbers change with every refresh.

Data source and licence

• FDA Import Alerts: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/ialist.html
• FDA Warning Letters: https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/compliance-actions-and-activities/warning-letters

FDA website content is in the public domain (FDA website policies). This is an independent tool; FDA has not reviewed, approved or sponsored it. Always confirm a listing on the FDA page (sourceUrl) before acting on it.

Limits

• Matching is by company name only (FDA lists show no tax or registration IDs). Similar names can match; check matchScore and the address.
• FDA sometimes truncates long firm names on its pages; we keep them exactly as published (except withheld individuals, below).
• A clean result is not proof. Records that name a private individual (for example letters to individual physicians, or sole proprietors) are withheld. We show a firm name only when it clearly looks like a company, for example when it ends in Inc, Ltd, GmbH or a similar form. Any other name is withheld, whether it belongs to a person or to a real company without such an ending. As of 20-22 Oct 2026 this is about 49% of Red List entries and about 66% of Green List entries. A withheld listing keeps its alert, country, dates and product lines (product code, product description and FDA's charge text, but not the free-text desc and notes), shows firmName as [individual withheld] with no address, and is never matched to your suppliers.
• About 46% of the warning letters on FDA's list are left out on purpose: letters to individuals, Clinical Investigator and Bioresearch Monitoring letters, and letters to recipients that do not clearly look like a company. A supplier with such a letter will not appear. For a supplier that matters, check FDA's own pages.
• Warning-letter excerpts are never included.
• Product notes (desc, notes, problems) have email addresses, phone numbers, street addresses and titled names (for example "Dr. Smith") replaced with placeholders such as [email removed].
• Some import alerts are country-wide or product-wide and have no firm list, so they produce no firm rows. On some alerts (for example 66-80) FDA blanks out the firm names, so those alerts also give no firm rows.
• Monitor mode reports new and changed records only; a firm removed from a list is not reported as a row.
• A value in countries or importAlertNumbers that matches nothing in our copy is reported in the run log. Use FDA's spelling, for example VIETNAM.
• maxRows (default 10,000) also caps export; raise it to export everything.

FAQ

Does a Green List listing mean trouble? No. Green List firms met FDA's criteria to be excluded from detention under that alert.

Can I monitor only my suppliers? Yes: use mode: "monitor" with your suppliers list and schedule the run. Use monitorId to keep separate watchlists.

Is this live data? No. FDA's robots rules limit when and how fast its import-alert pages may be read, so one refresh job reads FDA and your runs read the copy. Check mirrorDate on each row to see how old it is.

Does "no match" mean a supplier is not on an FDA list? No. About half of the Red List entries and two thirds of the Green List entries have a withheld name and cannot match, and many warning letters are left out (see Limits). Check FDA's own pages for suppliers that matter.

Changelog

• 0.1 (Oct 2026): first release: Red/Green Lists with products, warning letters with close-out letters, check/monitor/export modes.