U.S. Food and Drug Administration

About FDA recalls

The FDA is the single biggest source of US product recalls by volume. Its enforcement workload splits into three streams — Foods (everything from infant formula to leafy greens to nutritional supplements), Drugs (prescription medicines, over-the-counter products, and active pharmaceutical ingredients), and Medical Devices (everything from implants to home blood-pressure monitors). The Recall Desk ingests all three from the openFDA enforcement endpoint every six hours.

FDA classifies every recall as Class I, II, or III. Class I means there is a reasonable probability that using the product will cause serious health consequences or death — these are the recalls you should treat as urgent. Class II means the product may cause temporary or medically reversible harm. Class III means the product is unlikely to cause adverse health consequences but still violates FDA rules. We map these classifications into our 1–5 severity score using the rubric on the methodology page.

Medical-device recalls are the highest-volume stream by far — software-update letters, calibration corrections, and IFU updates all show up in enforcement reports alongside genuine hazard recalls. We try to surface the severe ones first, but when in doubt, click through to the FDA notice itself for the clinical detail.