Every recall on this record was published by a national authority, and we keep it after that authority takes it down. That lets us measure something no authority publishes about itself: how far back each country’s own public pet food recall listing actually reaches.
Measured on 7 September 2026, across all 209 recalls held, reading each authority’s own announcement date.
| Register | Held | Oldest still listed | Newest | Reaches back |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canada — Health Canada recalls and safety alerts | 18 | 18 May 2012 | 4 Nov 2025 | 14.3 years |
| United States — openFDA food enforcement | 3 | 3 Aug 2016 | 31 Jul 2019 | 10.1 years |
| United Kingdom — FSA Food Alerts | 28 | 28 Apr 2018 | 3 Oct 2025 | 8.4 years |
| United States — FDA animal & veterinary recalls | 62 | 31 Jan 2019 | 28 Aug 2026 | 7.6 years |
| France — RappelConso | 98 | 14 Sep 2021 | 19 Jun 2026 | 5.0 years |
Nearly three times the depth, depending on where you live
A pet owner in Canada can look up an official recall from May 2012. One in France cannot look up anything before September 2021, because RappelConso did not exist before then. One in the United States gets about seven and a half years from the FDA’s animal and veterinary listing, and a separate, much smaller set from the openFDA enforcement database — two American registers that do not agree with each other on what is in them.
None of that is a criticism of any authority. Registers begin when the law that created them begins, and a register that starts in 2021 is not worse than one that starts in 2012. The point is narrower and more practical: “check the official recall list” means something very different depending on which country you are standing in, and no single authority is in a position to tell you so.
The middle of each register, not just its edges
Reach is one thing; where the weight sits is another. The median announcement date of the recalls we hold:
- Canada — July 2016
- United Kingdom — November 2020
- United States, openFDA — July 2019
- France — December 2024
- United States, FDA animal & veterinary — March 2025
Canada reaches furthest back but its holdings are old: half of what it lists predates July 2016. France reaches back least far but is the most current of the European registers. Depth and freshness are not the same property, and a register can be strong in one and weak in the other.
Method, and what this is not
- Measured on 7 September 2026 from the 209 recalls on this record. Every one of the 209 carries an announcement date from its own authority; none were estimated.
- “Oldest still listed” is the oldest recall we hold from that register. It is not the oldest recall the authority ever issued, and it is not a claim that the authority has deleted anything.
- Our registers are matched to pet food by search terms against each authority’s own text. A register may therefore publish a pet food recall that our terms do not catch. Where a term list is the limiting factor we say so rather than implying the register is empty.
- The three-record openFDA figure is real and not a sampling artefact. That database holds 29,317 food enforcement records back to 2012, and a search across fifteen quoted pet food phrases returns three. American pet food recalls are announced on the FDA’s animal and veterinary pages, which are not part of openFDA.
- Dates are the authority’s own publication date, not the date we read the record.
Related: search the record itself · which governments publish pet food recalls at all · how this record is built
