How to Check if Your Products Have Been Recalled

You can’t respond to a recall you don’t know about, and “I had no idea” is not a defense the CPSC accepts. This guide walks through every reasonable way a Shopify merchant can check whether the products in their catalog have been recalled — from a one-time spot check to a continuously-running monitor.

The official sources of recall data

There are two authoritative sources for CPSC recall information:

1. CPSC.gov/Recalls — the searchable index of all CPSC recalls, with photos, hazard descriptions, model numbers, and remedy information. This is the place to go for full detail on a specific recall.
2. SaferProducts.gov — the federal database that aggregates recalls and incident reports. The public API behind SaferProducts.gov is what most third-party monitoring tools (including RecallDocket) consume.

Anything you see in a third-party recall feed should be cross-checked against these two sources before you act on it.

Method 1: Manual spot check

If you have a small catalog (under ~100 SKUs) and you want to do a one-time audit, the manual approach is workable:

1. Pull a list of your active SKUs from Shopify with brand, model, and product type.
2. Open CPSC.gov/Recalls and use the search box to look up each brand and model.
3. For any match, record the recall ID, hazard, date range, and remedy.

This takes about an hour for 100 SKUs the first time you do it. The problem is that it’s a snapshot — a recall published the day after your audit goes undetected.

Method 2: Email subscriptions

The CPSC offers free email subscriptions to recall announcements. Subscribe at CPSC.gov.

This catches every new recall the day it’s announced. The downside: you receive a recall for every category, so you’ll get notifications about lawn mowers when you sell baby clothes. You also still have to manually match each announcement against your catalog. For most merchants, the subscription becomes a noisy inbox that gets archived without action.

Method 3: Manual weekly review

A middle ground that works for catalogs in the hundreds of SKUs:

• Block 30 minutes on your calendar every Monday morning.
• Open the CPSC recall feed and skim the previous week’s recalls.
• For any recall in a category you sell, do a brand + model search against your Shopify catalog.

This is a reasonable compromise if you can be disciplined about the recurring time block. The most common failure mode is missing a week, then missing two, and then quietly stopping — by which point a recalled product has been sitting on your storefront for a month.

Method 4: Automated catalog matching

For most Shopify merchants past their first few dozen products, the only sustainable option is an automated monitor that:

1. Syncs your Shopify catalog.
2. Watches the official CPSC recall feed every day.
3. Compares each new recall against your live catalog and flags matches.
4. Notifies you in-app and by email so the first signal isn’t a customer complaint.

That’s what RecallDocket does. We do a daily comparison between the published CPSC recall list and your catalog using a layered matching engine (brand keywords, model numbers, product categories) so you find out about a relevant recall the same day it’s announced.

A few specific things to look for in any automated tool:

• Same-day detection. Anything slower than 24 hours from CPSC publication is a meaningful delay.
• Catalog-aware matching. Generic recall feeds are noise without your SKU data layered on top.
• In-app surfacing. Email-only alerts get buried. The most reliable signal is a notification inside the tool you actually use to run the store.
• A record of action. When you act on (or dismiss) a match, the system should record it. You want a paper trail.

What to do when a match shows up

Whether you found the match manually or through a tool, the response playbook is the same:

1. Stop selling the matched product immediately.
2. Quarantine on-hand inventory so it can’t accidentally ship.
3. Identify affected past orders using the recall’s date range and product details.
4. Notify affected customers with the official hazard description and remedy.
5. Document everything — the date you stopped selling, the customer notification you sent, any returns processed.
6. Evaluate any independent reporting duty under Section 15(b).

If the match also surfaces information the CPSC doesn’t already have — for example, a hazard pattern from your own returns or complaints — you may have an independent Section 15(b) duty to report it. RecallDocket helps you draft that report from the same flow.

The CTA, plainly

If you sell on Shopify and you don’t have an automated way to detect when a CPSC recall hits your catalog, install RecallDocket. The free tier covers up to 100 products and includes the daily recall monitor — no credit card required. Setup takes a couple of minutes and the first scan runs immediately after install.

Install RecallDocket on Shopify →

Further reading

• What Shopify Merchants Need to Know About CPSC Recalls
• Section 15(b) Reporting Explained: A Retailer’s Guide
• Product Safety Compliance Checklist for Shopify Stores