Data and sources

recallsapi.com republishes US government recall records with links back to each agency and the date we last saw each record change. This page says where the data comes from, how it is processed and where it falls short.

Sources

"Agency records start" is the earliest record each agency's machine-readable source returned when checked on 2026-10-05.

Update cadence

• The pipeline runs once a day (09:17 UTC) and asks each source for records from its last successful run onward, with a 14-day overlap: by publish or change date for CPSC and FSIS, by report date for FDA and NHTSA.
• A record whose content has not changed is left alone. A changed record is rewritten, its identifiers are re-extracted and its as_of moves to the time of the run.
• Agencies publish on their own schedules. expected_cadence_days in /v1/health is how often we expect new records from each source: 7 days for CPSC and NHTSA, 14 for each FDA feed, 21 for FSIS.
• An FDA recall appears when FDA publishes it in an enforcement report, which can be weeks after the firm starts the recall. For example, fda-H-1339-2026 started on 2026-08-22 and was in the report dated 2026-09-23.

Dates and links per agency

source_url always points at the machine-readable record we read. as_of is when recallsapi.com last saw the record change, not the agency's own date.

Identifiers and how they are normalized

When a printed barcode has a check digit that does not validate, both the printed (gtin) and the corrected (gtin_cd) GTIN are kept, because agency text sometimes carries typos. A product that matches only the corrected one is a strong match, with the reason saying the barcode was corrected. Every identifier keeps the raw text it came from (see /v1/recalls/{id}).

Confidence levels

Matching a product to a recall gives one of three levels. The same rules apply to /v1/check, catalog monitoring and the MCP tools.

A match is information to review against the agency notice, not a safety, legal or compliance determination.

Freshness: /v1/health

GET https://api.recallsapi.com/v1/health needs no key. It answers 200 when every source is fresh and 503 when any source is stale: no successful fetch in 36 hours, or 3 failed runs in a row. A source marked coming_soon (announced, not loaded yet) does not count.

Response from a test run on sample data (2 of 6 sources shown; ok is false because FSIS was stale in that run)

{
  "ok": false,
  "checked_at": "2026-10-05T23:19:34.384Z",
  "sources": [
    {
      "source": "cpsc",
      "status": "ok",
      "records": 3,
      "last_success": "2026-10-05T23:19:34.333Z",
      "last_attempt": "2026-10-05T23:19:34.333Z",
      "last_error": null,
      "consecutive_failures": 0,
      "newest_record": "2026-10-01",
      "upstream_updated": null,
      "expected_cadence_days": 7
    },
    {
      "source": "fda_food",
      "status": "ok",
      "records": 4,
      "last_success": "2026-10-05T23:19:34.364Z",
      "last_attempt": "2026-10-05T23:19:34.364Z",
      "last_error": null,
      "consecutive_failures": 0,
      "newest_record": "2026-08-22",
      "upstream_updated": "2026-09-23",
      "expected_cadence_days": 14
    }
  ]
}

Known gaps

• USDA FSIS records are not loaded yet. The FSIS API refuses server requests for now. We have asked FSIS for access; the daily pipeline keeps trying and loads FSIS by itself once it is allowed.
• USDA FSIS records have no barcodes and few identifiers. Meat, poultry and egg recalls name products and sometimes establishment numbers and lot codes, so matches against them rely on brand and name and are often possible. Some FSIS records carry no identifier at all (for example fsis-025-2026).
• NHTSA campaigns are per make, model and year. Whether a specific VIN is affected, and whether it has been repaired, is confirmed at nhtsa.gov/recalls.
• Identifiers in free text are found by pattern. A code is found when it follows a keyword (UPC, NDC, model, lot and so on). Tables flattened into text are read when a header names a model or item column next to a UPC column (for example cpsc-24116). Codes printed only in images and unusual layouts can still be missed.
• FDA timing. FDA recalls arrive with FDA's enforcement reports, after the recall is classified, not on the day the firm announces it.
• Later edits to older records. FDA and NHTSA records are fetched by report date, so besides the daily window each run also re-reads one older year, cycling through the history. A change the agency makes to an older record (for example an FDA status moving to terminated) is picked up within about 3 weeks for FDA and 2 months for NHTSA. Tell us if you see a record that differs from the agency's current version.
• Scope. Only the four agencies above. Recalls announced only by other federal agencies, by states or outside the US are not included.
• No match is not a clearance. A recall is matched only when the identifiers or names you send appear in the government record.

Found an error in how we normalized or matched a record? See disputes and corrections.