Methodology & data details

This site brings together five independent U.S. federal agencies that regulate consumer products into one database. The sources use different terminology, scope, and lifecycles when reporting their product recalls. For most fields the data is kept source-native, and only combined where it clearly lines up.

The five sources

• CPSC · Consumer Product Safety Commission

  Covers

  Consumer products: toys, electronics, household goods

  Class.

  —

  Lifecycle

  —

• FDA · Food & Drug Administration

  Covers

  Food, drugs, medical devices, cosmetics

  Class.

  1 / 2 / 3 / NC

  Lifecycle

  Ongoing / Completed / Terminated

• USDA · U.S. Department of Agriculture

  Covers

  Meat, poultry, processed egg products

  Class.

  Class I / II / III, Public Health Alert

  Lifecycle

  Active / Closed

• NHTSA · National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

  Covers

  Vehicles and motor-vehicle equipment

  Class.

  —

  Lifecycle

  —

• USCG · U.S. Coast Guard

  Covers

  Recreational boats and equipment

  Class.

  H / M / L / S

  Lifecycle

  Open / Closed

Data details

Classifications are source-native

FDA uses 1/2/3/NC, USDA uses Class I/II/III plus Public Health Alert, USCG uses H/M/L/S, and CPSC and NHTSA have none. These are not inherently comparable across agencies. An FDA "Class 2" is not necessarily a USDA "Class II". This is why there is no single overall classification legend.

USCG's H/M/L/S codes are a special case: their official meaning is not publicly documented, either on the Coast Guard's site or in the legal text laying out its regulating authority. We pass them through verbatim and order them provisionally: H/M/L are assumed to be High/Medium/Low, with S shown last and left uncolored. This is pending confirmation from the Coast Guard, and they are not a settled scale.

Trends are dated by announcement

Every time-series visualization on this site buckets each recall by its announcement / initiation date, and reflects when recalls actually happened, not when a record was last published. The browse and RSS lists are separately ordered by the last date the source published or updated the recall, to try to give newly edited recalls more primacy.

Recall status is only applicable for three sources

Only FDA, USDA, and USCG track an active/inactive lifecycle. CPSC and NHTSA do not, so their recalls show "No lifecycle", not a false "Inactive".

Geography has two distinct lenses

Distribution is where a product was sent, and is currently only available for recalls from the FDA and USDA. Firm registration is where the responsible firm is physically registered. These geographic slices answer different questions. Registration is not where the product went or where harm occurred. A recall counts in every state or firm it interacts with, so per-state and per-firm counts sum to more than the total.

Units recalled aren't comparable

Reported units are available for select recalls from the NHTSA and USCG. Quantities are available for select recalls from the FDA and USDA. They are a recall-magnitude measure, not unique items, and use incommensurable categories (e.g., count vs. weight vs. volume). They cannot be summed across sources or categories.

UPC matching is recall-level and sparse

There is no per-product UPC yet. UPC search matches a recall-level list that is CPSC-sourced and covers only ~5% of CPSC recalls.

"Revised" has no date

A recall marked revised means the data pipeline detected an editorially-meaningful change since first ingest. The revision is observed-edit evidence, not an official agency amendment, and currently carries no date.