Recall Risk Check

Pick your product type and tick the controls you have in place. You'll see what most often gets products like yours recalled, based on 9,012 FDA and USDA recalls, and which missing controls matter most.

1. What do you make?

2. Have you had a recall before?

3. Which of these do you do? Check every finished label against the allergen statement of every ingredient and sub-ingredient, at each new supplier and formula change Clean and verify between allergen and non-allergen runs on shared equipment Approve suppliers and get a certificate of analysis or letter of guarantee for each ingredient Use a validated kill step or process (and file it with FDA where required, e.g. acidified or low-acid canned foods) Swab the plant environment for Listeria or Salmonella on a schedule Screen for foreign material (metal detector, X-ray, sieves or magnets) and inspect blades and screens Keep facility registration, process filings and label claims current (an annual regulatory review)

Loaded with an example: A bakery with supplier approval and a metal detector, but no formal label-versus-ingredient check.

— —of recalls in your category

—recalls studied in this category

—were Class I, the most serious kind

—of manufacturers with one recall had another

Where to start

The research behind this tool

Why Food Gets Recalled, and How to Keep It From Being YoursPlain-language guide: what 9,012 recalls show, and the controls that prevent the most common ones.

Technical report (PDF)Why U.S. Foods Are Recalled: root causes and repeat recalls in 9,012 FDA and FSIS recalls.

The dataset (CSV)All 9,012 recall events with hazard, root cause, origin, discovery route and product category.