openFDA Recalls & Adverse Events - Food, Drug & Medical Device

Search the U.S. FDA's recall enforcement reports (food & cosmetics, drugs, medical devices) and adverse event reports (FAERS for drugs, MAUDE for medical devices, CAERS for food/supplements/cosmetics) through the official openFDA API. Filter by product, brand, ingredient or firm name, recall class and date, and get clean, flat JSON rows instead of deeply nested raw records. No API key needed (optional free key for heavy use) - 50 recalls in about 1 second.

Who uses it

• Food, supplement, pharma & device compliance / QA teams: weekly feed of new Class I/II recalls in your category or from your suppliers.
• Amazon / e-commerce sellers & retailers: check products, ingredients and suppliers against recalls before listing or sourcing.
• Insurers, product-liability & mass-tort law firms: count and export adverse event reports for a drug or device.
• Pharmacovigilance, med-affairs & market research: monitor competitor brands' reported reactions over time.
• Journalists & AI apps: recall alerts into Slack, Sheets, newsletters or LLM pipelines via the Apify API.

Input

Field	Description
dataset	food_recalls, drug_recalls, device_recalls, drug_adverse_events, device_adverse_events, food_adverse_events.
searchTerms	Product / brand / ingredient / firm, e.g. ozempic, salmonella, insulin pump. One search each.
classification	Recalls only: Class I / II / III.
reportedWithinDays	Last N days (default 90), or exact dateFrom / dateTo.
maxItemsPerQuery	Max records per term (default 100).
rawSearch	Optional openFDA search expression for power users.
apiKey	Optional free openFDA key (only for very high volume).

{ "dataset": "drug_adverse_events", "searchTerms": ["ozempic", "mounjaro"], "reportedWithinDays": 365, "maxItemsPerQuery": 1000 }

Output examples

Recall:

{ "dataset": "food_recalls", "recallNumber": "H-1339-2026", "classification": "Class I", "recallStatus": "Ongoing",
  "recallingFirm": "Everything Sprouts, LLC", "productDescription": "Everything Sprouts Crunchy Protein Sprout Mix ... UPC 0 87906-01018 7",
  "reasonForRecall": "Sprouts may be contaminated with STEC E. coli and/or Salmonella.", "productQuantity": "201.56 pounds",
  "distributionPattern": "MN, WI", "recallInitiationDate": "2026-08-22", "reportDate": "2026-09-23", "city": "Minneapolis", "state": "MN" }

Drug adverse event (FAERS):

{ "dataset": "drug_adverse_events", "safetyReportId": "26940200", "receiveDate": "2026-06-30", "serious": true, "hospitalization": true,
  "death": false, "occurCountry": "PK", "patientAge": "45", "patientAgeUnit": "year", "patientSex": "female",
  "reactions": ["Monoplegia", "Back pain", "Product use in unapproved indication"], "suspectDrugs": ["OZEMPIC"],
  "brandNames": ["OZEMPIC"], "genericNames": ["ORAL SEMAGLUTIDE"], "manufacturerNames": ["Novo Nordisk Pharmaceutical Industries, LP"] }

Device events include brand/generic names, manufacturer, product codes, product & patient problems and the narrative text.

Pricing (pay per event)

• $0.002 per record saved (fda-record) - 500 records = $1.
• Tiny start fee per run (apify-actor-start). Failed searches are not charged. Set "Maximum cost per run" to cap spend.

Notes

• Source: openFDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration), public-domain data. Adverse event reports are unverified, do not prove causation and are published with a delay. Do not rely on openFDA for medical decisions. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the FDA.
• Without a key openFDA allows 1,000 requests/day per IP; this Actor fetches up to 1,000 records per request, so normal runs need only a few requests.