FDA Animal & Veterinary Adverse Event Scraper

Extract adverse event reports from the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) via the openFDA public API. Covers 1.3M+ reports spanning drug reactions, product defects, and lack-of-effect incidents in dogs, cats, horses, cattle, and other species.

What This Actor Does

This actor queries the openFDA animalandveterinary/event endpoint and returns flattened, analysis-ready records. Each record includes:

• Animal details: species, breed, gender, age, weight
• Drug information: brand name, active ingredients, dosage, route, manufacturer, ATC Vet code
• Adverse reaction terms using VeDDRA (Veterinary Dictionary for Drug Regulatory Activities)
• Outcome data: medical status and number of animals affected
• Report metadata: FDA receive date, reporter type, seriousness flag

Nested drug[], reaction[], and outcome[] arrays are serialized as JSON strings so the dataset stays flat and easy to export to CSV or other tabular formats.

Use Cases

• Veterinary pharmacovigilance: Track drug safety signals for specific compounds or drug classes
• Pet food & product safety: Identify adverse events linked to specific products or manufacturers
• Date-range incremental pulls: Schedule recurring runs to pull only new reports since your last extraction
• Species-specific analysis: Scope to dogs, cats, horses, or cattle for targeted research
• Legal & regulatory research: Identify adverse event patterns for class-action or regulatory work

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
maxItems	integer	Maximum number of records to return. Required. Use 0 for unlimited (runs through all matching records up to the 25,000 skip cap per window).
dateFrom	string	Filter to reports received on or after this date. Format: YYYYMMDD (e.g. 20230101).
dateTo	string	Filter to reports received on or before this date. Format: YYYYMMDD (e.g. 20231231).
speciesFilter	string	Filter by animal species. Use exact capitalized values from the API: Dog, Cat, Horse, Bovine, Avian, etc.
seriousOnly	boolean	When true, returns only reports marked as serious adverse events.

Example: Incremental Weekly Pull

To extract only the most recent week of reports, set dateFrom to 7 days ago and dateTo to today (YYYYMMDD format):

{
  "dateFrom": "20240101",
  "dateTo": "20240107",
  "maxItems": 0
}

Output Fields

Field	Type	Description
report_id	string	Unique FDA CVM report identifier
original_receive_date	string	Date FDA received the report (YYYYMMDD)
receiver	string	FDA receiving center (JSON string)
primary_reporter	string	Reporter type: veterinarian, owner, manufacturer, etc.
secondary_reporter	string	Secondary reporter type (if any)
type_of_information	string	Report types: Safety Issue, Product Defect, Lack of Effect
serious_ae	boolean	Whether this is a serious adverse event
number_of_animals_treated	integer	Animals treated with the product
number_of_animals_affected	integer	Animals that experienced adverse effects
animal_species	string	Species: Dog, Cat, Horse, Bovine, etc.
animal_breed	string	Breed information (JSON string)
animal_gender	string	Gender of the affected animal
animal_reproductive_status	string	Reproductive status
animal_age	string	Age with value, unit, and qualifier (JSON string)
animal_weight	string	Weight with value and unit (JSON string)
drug	string	Array of drug objects (JSON string) — brand name, active ingredients, dose, route, manufacturer, ATC Vet code
reaction	string	Array of VeDDRA reaction terms (JSON string) — term name, code, version
outcome	string	Array of outcome objects (JSON string) — medical status, animals affected
treated_for_ae	boolean	Whether the animal was treated for the adverse event
scraped_at	string	ISO timestamp when the record was extracted

Technical Notes

• API: Uses the FDA openFDA public API — no API key required, no authentication, no captcha
• Rate limit: 240 requests/minute without a key; the actor uses a 250ms delay to stay within limits
• Pagination: skip+limit with a 25,000 skip hard cap per openFDA policy; use date windowing for larger backfills
• Proxy: Direct connection (no proxy needed) — the FDA API is public and accessible from datacenter IPs

Data Source

All data is sourced from the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) via the openFDA API. This is publicly available government data under the openFDA terms of service.