About Daily Food Recalls

Who runs this

Questions, feedback, or press: [email protected]. Daily Food Recalls is reader-supported. If you find it useful, you can buy me a coffee ☕

Where our data comes from

Every recall on this site comes from an official U.S. federal source — two agencies, three channels:

• FDA recall announcements on fda.gov (the recalls RSS feed and the announcement pages it links to). These usually appear first, often weeks before the structured record.
• FDA enforcement reports — the openFDA food enforcement API, covering FDA-regulated foods such as packaged and processed products, produce, and dairy. It carries the agency's hazard class and status, and trails the announcement by about five weeks at the median.
• USDA FSIS — the FSIS Recall API, covering meat, poultry, and egg products, which the FDA does not regulate.

We link to the agency's official notice on every recall page. When our summary and the official notice differ, the official notice is authoritative — always confirm there before acting.

How we build these pages

Recall pages are assembled automatically from the agencies' own records by the rules below. Nothing on a recall page is invented: where a fact isn't in the official record, we leave it out.

1. Merge. The same recall often arrives through more than one channel. We match the copies — firm, product, hazard, dates and product codes — and keep one record.
2. One page per announcement. The agencies file one record per product, so a single recall can arrive as dozens of entries. Products recalled by the same company on the same date share one page, which lists every product with its UPC and lot codes.
3. Read what the notice says, not what's nearby. Affected states come from the distribution statement, never the company's address. Allergens come from the recall reason, never the product label — a label lists allergens that are correctly declared. Hazards are mapped to a short, consistent list (Listeria, Salmonella, undeclared milk, and so on).
4. Hazard class. We show the FDA's class (I, II or III) as the agency assigned it. When we pick a recall up from an FDA announcement before the agency has classified it, we estimate the class from the hazard, and the agency's own class replaces it when the enforcement report arrives.
5. Status. We call a recall closed only when the agency marks it terminated, completed or closed. One that is more than six months old and still open is labelled "older recall": we don't claim it is resolved, and every recall keeps its page.
6. Short product names. Agency product text is often a label transcript full of codes, so page titles use a short name generated automatically under one rule: it may only use words that appear in the agency's own text. Every name is checked against that text before it is published, and the agency's full description is shown on the page as "Product as filed".
7. What to do. The "What to do" line is standard guidance — don't eat it; discard or return it — replaced by the notice's own refund instruction when it gives one.
8. Breaking alerts. A severity score decides which new recalls are serious and recent enough to flag as "breaking" and send to email subscribers.
9. Corrections. We review the data and fix errors by hand — for example, reclassifying a recall a rule misread — and then fix the rule, so the same mistake doesn't recur. Report an error.

Our normalized dataset is published openly at /api/recalls.json.

How often it updates

A full refresh runs once every day. A separate fast-path checks the feeds about every 15 minutes and rushes major new recalls live within minutes of the agencies posting them. Note that the FDA source itself updates roughly weekly while USDA is closer to real time, so the site is only ever as current as the underlying government feed. Every page is stamped with the date it was last updated.

Hazard classes

We use the FDA's official definitions:

• Class I — a reasonable probability that the product will cause serious health problems or death.
• Class II — the product may cause temporary or medically reversible health problems.
• Class III — the product is unlikely to cause harm (often labeling or quality issues).

Accuracy & corrections

We mirror official government data as faithfully as we can, but errors can happen — a recall may be resolved before our data catches up, or an automated summary may misread a field. If you spot something wrong, email [email protected] with the product name and the issue. We correct verified errors promptly and, when in doubt, defer to the official FDA or USDA notice.

Our independence & disclaimers

Daily Food Recalls is an independent, privately operated service. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the FDA, USDA, or any other government agency. The information here is general food-safety information for the public and is not medical, health, or legal advice. If you believe you have consumed a recalled product and feel unwell, contact a healthcare provider or your local health department.