Recall notices, translated.
19 terms that show up in FDA and USDA notices, each defined once, in English, with the rule this site applies to it. Every definition links to the page where it matters.
Recall
A recall is the removal of a food product from the market because it may be unsafe or is not what its label says. In the United States nearly every food recall is started by the company that made or sold the product, and the FDA or USDA FSIS oversees it and publishes the notice. This site turns those notices into incident pages: a red "Do not eat" sticker for a recall, a striped yellow "Caution" badge for an advisory, and a grey "All clear" stamp once the recall is over.
See: The list · Advisory versus recall
FDA versus USDA FSIS
Two agencies regulate most of the food on a US shelf. The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) covers meat, poultry, and processed egg products and publishes recalls and Public Health Alerts as they happen; the FDA covers almost everything else, including produce, dairy, seafood, shell eggs, and packaged foods, and lists its recalls in a weekly enforcement report. A frozen pepperoni pizza is FSIS; a frozen cheese pizza is FDA. This site reads both agencies and shows which one published each notice.
Class I recall
Class I is the most serious of the three classes the FDA assigns to a recall: there is a reasonable probability that eating the product will cause serious health consequences or death. Listeria in a ready-to-eat food, Salmonella in produce, and an undeclared major allergen such as peanut or milk are usually Class I. USDA FSIS uses the same Class I definition for meat, poultry, and egg products. This site shows a Class I recall as "Serious health risk".
See: Bacteria and friends · Allergens
Class II recall
Class II means eating the product may cause a temporary or medically reversible health problem, or that the chance of a serious problem is remote. A foreign material that is unlikely to cause injury, or an undeclared ingredient that is not a major allergen, is often Class II. This site shows a Class II recall as "Moderate risk".
See: Extra crunchy
Class III recall
Class III means eating the product is not likely to cause any health problem. The product still breaks a rule, most often a labeling or manufacturing requirement, so it is removed from sale. This site shows a Class III recall as "Low risk".
See: Paperwork
Public Health Alert
A Public Health Alert is a warning USDA FSIS issues when it believes a meat, poultry, or egg product may be unsafe but a recall is not requested, for example because the product is no longer available for sale or was not produced under FSIS inspection. The alert names the product and the risk and tells you what to do, in the same format as a recall notice. This site labels every Public Health Alert "Caution", never "Do not eat", because the government did not order the product off shelves.
Advisory versus recall
A recall means a company has pulled a product and the FDA or USDA has published the notice; an advisory means a regulator flagged a product without ordering it off shelves, as in a Public Health Alert, an import alert, or a "do not consume" warning. This site keeps the two visually separate: a red "Do not eat" sticker for recalls and outbreaks, a striped yellow "Caution" badge for advisories. An advisory is never dressed up as a recall, and the label is set by a fixed rule from the kind of notice the source published, not by a judgment call.
See: Why this exists · The Caution list
Outbreak investigation
A foodborne outbreak is two or more people who get the same illness from the same food. The CDC, the FDA, USDA FSIS, and state health departments investigate together, and an investigation can name a suspected food days or weeks before any recall exists. This site labels a notice tied to an active investigation "Outbreak · do not eat" and sorts it above ordinary recalls. It has no CDC source yet, so an outbreak appears only when an FDA or FSIS notice is marked as related to one.
Voluntary recall
Almost every food recall in the United States is voluntary: the company decides to pull the product, often after the FDA or USDA FSIS tells it about a problem, and the agency oversees the recall and publishes the notice. The FDA has had the power to order a food recall since 2011 and rarely uses it; FSIS has no mandatory recall authority for meat and poultry, though it can detain and seize product. "Voluntary" describes who started the recall, not whether you should keep eating the food.
Recall initiation date versus report date
The recall initiation date is the day the company began the recall, usually by notifying its customers and pulling product. The report date is the day the FDA listed the recall in its weekly enforcement report, which is often the first time the public can see it. This site measures the gap between the two, in days, for every FDA notice that states both dates, and ranks them on the Slowest checkout lanes page. The FDA publishes once a week, so up to seven days of any gap is just the calendar; USDA FSIS notices give no initiation date and cannot be measured.
Enforcement report
The enforcement report is the FDA's weekly list of every recall it is monitoring, published on Wednesdays and available through the openFDA API. Each entry carries the product description, the reason for the recall, the classification, the distribution pattern, the recall initiation date, and the report date. The FDA lists one entry per product, so one recall by a cheese maker can appear as a dozen or more rows sharing an event number. This site groups those rows into one incident and re-reads the last 14 days of reports every morning, because entries keep gaining products for weeks.
Lot code
A lot code is the code a manufacturer prints on a package to identify the batch it came from, usually a mix of letters and numbers near the date, often encoding the production date, line, or plant. Recalls frequently apply only to certain lots, so the same product with a different lot code is not part of the recall. Check the code on your package against the codes on the incident page, not just the product name. The search box on this site accepts partial lot codes.
See: Check my food
Best-by, use-by, and sell-by
"Best by" or "best if used by" is the manufacturer's estimate of when the product is at its best quality; "use by" is the last date recommended for peak quality; "sell by" tells the store how long to display it. Except for infant formula, federal law does not require or standardize these dates on food, and none of them is a safety date. In a recall notice they serve a different purpose: together with the lot code, they identify exactly which packages are affected.
See: Lot code · Check my food
UPC
A UPC, or Universal Product Code, is the 12-digit number printed under the barcode that identifies one product from one company in one package size. Recall notices list the UPCs of affected products, and the same product in a different size has a different UPC. Typing the number into the search box on this site is the fastest way to check a product, since a UPC is the same nationwide.
See: Check my food
Julian date on egg cartons
USDA-graded egg cartons carry a three-digit Julian date, from 001 for January 1 to 365 for December 31, that shows the day the eggs were packed, along with a plant number beginning with P. Egg recall notices identify affected cartons by plant number and a range of Julian dates, so those digits are what to check. The sell-by date on the same carton is a separate number and is not what the notice means.
Undeclared allergen
An undeclared allergen is a major food allergen that is in the product but not on its label, usually because of a mislabeled package, a wrong ingredient, or contact with another product on the same line. It is the most common reason for food recalls in the United States. Federal law requires labels to name nine major allergens: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame, which was added in January 2023. This site tags those nine plus sulfites and gluten, and the allergen pages list every notice for each.
See: Allergens · Surprise ingredients
Establishment number (EST.)
The establishment number identifies the plant where a meat, poultry, or egg product was processed and appears inside the USDA mark of inspection on the package, as "EST." followed by a number for meat or "P-" followed by a number for poultry. USDA FSIS recall notices cite it because the same product can come from several plants and only one may be affected. Match the number on your package to the one in the notice.
Retail distribution list
After a recall, USDA FSIS posts a retail distribution list: the names of stores that received the product and the states they are in, once the company's shipping records have been checked. The list can appear days after the recall notice and is updated as more records come in. This site shows a retailer on an incident page when the notice names it, and links the source so you can check the agency's own list. The FDA usually describes distribution by state or as nationwide rather than by store.
Terminated, completed, and called off
The FDA marks a recall "completed" when the company has finished retrieving or correcting the product, and "terminated" when the agency has decided that all reasonable efforts to remove it have been made. USDA FSIS closes and archives a recall on the same basis. This site labels both "All clear" and moves the incident to the called-off list, where it stays searchable, because a product with a long shelf life can still be in a pantry after the recall is over.
See: Called off
Missing a term, or think a definition is wrong? Tell us. Definitions here describe agency practice in general terms; the notice linked from each incident is the authority for that incident.