FDA Food Recall Search: openFDA Reports Guide

Quality and procurement teams in the United States often need to know whether an ingredient, product, brand, pathogen, or hazard has already appeared in a published recall or safety alert. The registers are public. This page explains which registers Recall and Safety Alert Watch reads, how to query them, and the limits that keep an empty result from being read as clearance.

Which registers are searched

The capability queries two live registers. It does not keep a copied extract.

• US FDA enforcement reports, via openFDA at api.fda.gov. US Government public domain. openFDA terms forbid implying FDA endorsement. Results are not for making medical or regulatory decisions unaided.
• UK Food Standards Agency food alerts, at data.food.gov.uk, under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

There is no EU-wide register in this version. An empty result set says nothing about withdrawals or alerts in the EU.

The default register is the US FDA enforcement reports. Pass the UK register when the question is about FSA alerts.

What a search returns

For a query such as listeria or sesame, the capability returns what the chosen register published: date, product description, stated reason, hazard classification where the FDA provides one, current status, and the authority name. It also reports total_in_register so you can see whether the page in hand is the whole answer or the first of many.

A match is a historical event published by an authority. It is not a verdict about a company’s current practice, a supplier’s reliability, or an ingredient’s approval status.

Empty results versus a register that could not be reached

Two failures look similar and mean opposite things.

• An empty result set means the register published nothing matching that term. It does not mean the ingredient is safe, has never been recalled elsewhere, or is absent from a register this capability does not cover.
• A register that cannot be reached is reported as an error, never as an empty result. Acting on “we could not look” as though it were “nothing was found” is the failure this capability is built to avoid.

Worked queries

Connect your AI assistant to fmcg.network and ask in your own words.

Search FDA enforcement reports for listeria and show dates, product descriptions, and hazard classes.

The assistant calls recall_watch__search_us_recalls with query: listeria and returns published FDA reports that cite Listeria.

Search UK FSA alerts for undeclared sesame.

The assistant calls the UK tool with a title match for sesame and returns FSA alerts the register published on that term.

Install fmcg.network in Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, or Cursor, then open Recall and Safety Alert Watch in the directory.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this search EU recall systems such as RASFF? No. This version reads US FDA enforcement reports and UK FSA alerts only. Absence of a hit is not EU clearance.

Does a match mean the supplier is unsafe? No. A recall is a published historical event. The capability must not characterise a supplier, product, or ingredient from a match.

What does openFDA allow you to say about FDA? openFDA forbids implying FDA endorsement. Its results are not for unaided medical or regulatory decisions.

What if the FDA API is down? That is reported as an error, not as zero matches.

Which register is the default? US FDA enforcement reports. Set the UK FSA register when you want food.gov.uk alerts.