Is My Food Recalled? · Good Machines

Experiments · 01 · iPhone

Scan a packaged food, check it against every FDA and USDA FSIS recall notice, and keep watching the foods you already have at home.

Version 1.0 · In review at the App Store

The Scan screen: a jar of peanut butter in the viewfinder with its barcode centered, and an Enter barcode manually button.

Every result is a possible match, not a safety determination. Recall notices often do not carry a barcode, and a recall usually applies to specific lots rather than every package with the same UPC. The app shows you the official notice so you can compare the package, lot, date, and distribution details yourself. It never says a food is safe.

What it does

Save a food. The app keeps checking it against every notice.

The My Foods screen: two watched items, one marked Possible match and one marked No known match.

02 / My Foods

A tiny friend keeps watch.

Each saved food gets a label with its state, its UPC, and when it was last checked against FDA and USDA FSIS. Optional remote monitoring rechecks every fifteen minutes and notifies you only when a possible match appears or changes.

The Food details screen: a label reading Possible match above the matching FDA notice.

03 / The answer

The answer, with its evidence.

A possible match puts the notice, the lot, and the date next to your package and links to the original, then leaves the judgment to you. If a source cannot be reached, the result says so instead of showing "no recalls."

The Coverage screen: scope, sources, and alert settings.

04 / Coverage

Nationwide, not nearby only.

The search never filters by where you are; distribution details show up in the result so you can weigh them yourself. Agencies do not publish notices in real time, and alerts are not real time either, so go by the dates in the official notice.

The label

Three things a result can say.

No known match

No notice matched this item at the time shown, from the sources that answered.

FDA / USDA SOURCES

Possible match

A notice may cover this item. Compare the lot and date with the official notice.

OPEN OFFICIAL NOTICE

Partial

A source could not be reached. This result is incomplete, and the label says which source.

USDA NOT REACHED

On purpose

What it does not do

It never labels a food safe. "No known match" means exactly that: nothing matched, from the sources that answered, at the time shown.
It does not use your location. The search scope is the whole country.
It has no account, no analytics SDK, and no tracking. The free version shows small non-personalized banners at the bottom of the two list screens, never beside a result; one subscription removes them.
It does not upload camera frames. The camera is used only to recognize a barcode.

Sources

Where the answers come from

Recalls: FDA food-safety recall notices and the USDA FSIS Recall API. Both are public and require no credential.
Catalog: Open Food Facts, a community-maintained product database. It supplies product names and images only; it is not a recall authority.
Scope: United States. The government sources describe U.S. recalls.
Status: Version 1.0 is with App Review. The app is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by FDA, USDA, or Open Food Facts.

Is My Food Recalled? is an experiment by Good Machines LLC. Questions go to justin@goodmachines.ai.