Pet Food Recall Data Sources - Status Assessment
Assessment Date: 2026-07-18
Sources Tested
❌ EFSA (European Food Safety Authority)
- Tested URL:
https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/biological-hazards-and-contaminants→ HTTP 404 - Tested URL:
https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/feed-additives-3→ HTTP 404 - Result: URL patterns invalid (EFSA site restructured)
- Recommendation: Manual URL discovery via EFSA sitemap.xml needed
⚠️ RASFF Window (Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed)
- Tested URL:
https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/rasff-window/portal/?event=SearchByKeyword&NewSearch=1&keywords=pet%20food - HTTP: 200 OK, 104KB HTML
- Issue: SPA shell only - data loaded via JavaScript (not in initial HTML)
- Cannot parse without browser automation
❌ openFDA Food Enforcement Recalls API
- W6-B1 evaluation: 17 records returned, 0 actual pet food
- Product description field does not distinguish pet food from human food
- Hot Dog / Black Cat Ice Cream false positives
- Verdict: NOT RECOMMENDED as primary pet food recall source
⚠️ USDA FoodData Central
- W6-B2 evaluation: pet food hit rate < 0.1%
- ZIP download returns 404
- Verdict: NOT RECOMMENDED for pet food
Realistic Strategy
Given the difficulty of obtaining structured pet food recall data:
- Maintain a qualitative summary of known pet food safety incidents (not structured database)
- Cite USDA GAIN reports (which do discuss regulatory actions) as primary source
- Acknowledge data gap in topics: "Recall database not currently available"
- For future: Consider manual curation from news feeds (FDA Enforcement Reports filtered for pet food)
USDA GAIN as Substitute
USDA GAIN reports DO discuss pet food regulatory actions:
- KS2025-0054: ROK IHR grace period extension
- HK2026-0009: Hong Kong pet food market (no recall data)
- CH2022-0063: China GB/T 31216/31217 standards
Conclusion
No structured pet food recall database available from official APIs. Future work: manual curation or paid commercial database subscription.
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*Last updated: 2026-07-18*