Food Safety Center: Sources & Methods

Where the information comes from

• Recall announcements: FDA recalls list and the USDA-FSIS recall API (meat, poultry and egg products, including FSIS public health alerts, which are not recalls). Checked once a day; we show the last 90 days.
• Outbreak investigations: the FDA CORE investigations table, checked once a day. An investigation is not a recall: FDA often has not identified a food yet, and we show its wording as is. Also see CDC current outbreak investigations.
• FDA enforcement reports: openFDA, which FDA updates weekly. These are classified records that can appear days to weeks after a recall is announced, so they are not breaking news.
• Outbreak history: CDC NORS data, updated yearly; it describes past outbreaks only.
• Guidance: CDC, FDA, USDA and FoodSafety.gov pages, linked on every page with their last-reviewed date where the source shows one.

What we can't do

• We don't list every recall. Not all recalls get a public announcement, and our copy can lag the agencies.
• "No match" in our recall search does not mean a product is safe. Always check the official notice and your package.
• We don't infer which ZIP codes or stores are affected; we show the agency's own distribution wording.
• We don't diagnose illness or give medical advice. Our health pages summarize CDC and FDA information and are not medically reviewed.

Who writes this and how

The VanillaGoods editorial team writes and maintains these pages. We restate official U.S. guidance from the CDC, FDA, USDA and FoodSafety.gov as closely as possible, link every source with its review date, and show when we last checked it. We are bakers, not doctors: our health pages are educational summaries and are not medically reviewed. Recall and outbreak lists are copied from the agencies automatically once a day.

Corrections

Spotted an error? Email help@vanillagoods.com. Safety-critical errors are corrected or removed as soon as we confirm them.