PACA Produce Counterparty Check

Search the public USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) PACA database for produce-trade counterparties. The Actor returns business license status, matching business/branch/trade-name records, and optional complaint totals and license dates from the public business profile.

What it is useful for

• Screening a prospective produce buyer, seller, broker, or distributor before a transaction.
• Checking whether the city, state, and ZIP supplied for a counterparty match USDA's business listing.
• Flagging an identity detail for human verification when a contact claims to represent a company with a different public PACA location.
• Looking up a PACA license number or checking license status.
• Finding public formal and informal reparation complaint counts associated with a matched business.
• Comparing buyer-supplied license, email, phone, city, state, and ZIP details with the public business record; output contains the match status only.
• Returning compact JSON that an AI agent can explain, compare, or pass into a buyer's own workflow.

Input

Supply 1–10 queries. Each query requires a category: business, license, city, state, or zip. Text categories also require searchText; state searches take a two-letter code. Set match to contains or begins for text searches. ZIP searches require zipMin and zipMax as five-digit strings. maxMatchesPerQuery is capped at 50. When includeBusinessProfiles is true, the Actor performs up to 10 business-profile lookups per query for complaint totals and license dates. Optionally include a claimedCounterparty object on a query. Its supplied licenseNumber, email, phone, city, state, and zip are compared with the matched USDA record. This enables an agent to flag identity details for human follow-up without echoing either the supplied or listed email/phone in the dataset.

Example:

{
  "queries": [
    {
      "searchText": "Example Produce LLC",
      "category": "business",
      "match": "contains",
      "claimedCounterparty": {
        "licenseNumber": "12345678",
        "email": "ap@example.com",
        "phone": "555-0100",
        "city": "Fresno",
        "state": "CA",
        "zip": "93721"
      }
    },
    { "searchText": "12345678", "category": "license" }
  ],
  "maxMatchesPerQuery": 10,
  "includeBusinessProfiles": true
}

Output

One dataset item is emitted per query. businessMatches includes business name, license number/status, city/state/ZIP, active reparation complaint indicator, and total formal claim amount. When available, the nested profile includes license dates and formal/informal complaint counts plus disputed counts. If claimedCounterparty was supplied, identityChecks gives match, mismatch, not_provided, not_listed, not_checked, or source_unavailable for each relevant field. An exact match is only a match to the source record, not proof that the person contacting the user represents that business. branchMatches and tradeNameMatches keep related PACA records separate so agents do not mistake them for additional business entities.

Personal contact data, principal names, source system IDs, emails, phone numbers, and street addresses are deliberately excluded from output. Claimed counterparty details are submitted as Actor input; Apify run-input retention and access are governed by the user's Apify settings. Do not send information you are not authorized to process.

Market fit and commercial limits

This is an agent-friendly workflow over USDA's free public records, not a replacement for paid produce-trade credit services. Blue Book Services, for example, offers proprietary credit ratings, payment trends, and trade references that this Actor cannot provide. PACA complaint history is not a substitute for those signals. The potential advantage is inexpensive, repeatable checking of official license and complaint facts inside a buyer's existing automation. That advantage still needs customer validation before pricing or revenue can be claimed.

No Store price or margin is claimed from local tests. Set pricing only after a production Apify run confirms compute usage and after comparing the Store's current fee schedule with the value delivered. The public PACA search is free to use directly, so customers would be paying for workflow automation and structured output rather than exclusive data.

Source and limits

Source: USDA AMS PACA public search. USDA's search guide says no login is required and explains that the public records show license status and complaint information. AMS says information presented on its website is public and may be copied, but its privacy statement does not document this portal's machine interface or guarantee automated access. The Actor uses the same logged-out public workflow and makes a small number of sequential requests per query. It does not use credentials, defeat challenges, or bypass access controls. If the source blocks automated access or changes its workflow, stop use until the integration is revalidated.

This is a screening aid, not a credit score, debt verification, identity-resolution service, or legal conclusion. USDA warns produce sellers about imposters falsely claiming to be licensed buyers and recommends cross-checking buyer details against the PACA search tool. Text search can return similarly named companies; a mismatch may reflect a branch, stale information, formatting differences, or an unrelated company and does not prove fraud. A match only confirms the submitted value matches a public field; it does not authenticate the caller or delivery. A complaint count or claim amount is not proof of a current unpaid invoice. Confirm identity and material findings through an independently obtained company contact before making a credit or contracting decision. Data availability and source behavior are controlled by USDA.

Test and run

npm test runs deterministic tests, including checks that personal contact fields are not emitted and that supplied details produce status-only comparisons. npm run smoke performs a live, read-only search for a known public PACA business name and verifies listed license/location details against the source.