{"chart":{"slug":"why-are-drugs-recalled","title":"Why are drugs recalled?","takeaway":"The most common reason in the 4,274 drug recalls the FDA classified from 2013 through 2025 was “not made under good manufacturing practices”: 673 recalls, about 16%. Next come “impurities or contamination” (542), “mix-ups and label errors” (504) and “can't be shown to be sterile” (495). Chartly grouped FDA's written reasons by their key words; each recall counts once, under its main reason.","topic":"Food and drug safety","chart_type":"bar","ranking":false,"x_label":"Reason for the recall","y_label":"Drug recalls since 2013","unit":null,"points_count":12,"source":{"name":"U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Enforcement Reports (openFDA drug recall data)","url":"https://open.fda.gov/apis/drug/enforcement/"},"license":{"name":"Public domain (U.S. government work); source U.S. Food and Drug Administration, openFDA","url":"https://open.fda.gov/license/"},"data_as_of":"2025-12-31","updated_at":"2026-10-17T18:50:41.848Z","url":"https://chart.ly/charts/why-are-drugs-recalled","api_url":"https://chart.ly/api/v1/charts/why-are-drugs-recalled","csv_url":"https://chart.ly/charts/why-are-drugs-recalled/data.csv","image_url":"https://chart.ly/charts/why-are-drugs-recalled/image.png","embed_url":"https://chart.ly/charts/why-are-drugs-recalled/embed","credit":"U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Enforcement Reports (openFDA drug recall data), via Chartly (https://chart.ly/charts/why-are-drugs-recalled)","credit_html":"U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Enforcement Reports (openFDA drug recall data), via \u003ca href=\"https://chart.ly/charts/why-are-drugs-recalled\"\u003eChartly\u003c/a\u003e","average_label":null,"zero_axis":true,"data":[{"label":"Not made under good manufacturing practices","value":673},{"label":"Impurities or contamination","value":542},{"label":"Mix-ups and label errors","value":504},{"label":"Can't be shown to be sterile","value":495},{"label":"Particles or foreign matter","value":443},{"label":"Too strong or too weak","value":415},{"label":"Failed stability or other quality checks","value":349},{"label":"Doesn't dissolve as it should","value":285},{"label":"Sold without FDA approval","value":243},{"label":"Faulty container or delivery device","value":191},{"label":"Germs in a product that needn't be sterile","value":114},{"label":"Other","value":20}],"annotations":[]},"docs":"https://chart.ly/developers","terms":"Free to use with credit: wherever you show or quote a chart's data, name Chartly with a link to that chart's url (each chart's credit line does both) and credit its source as its license asks.","credit":"U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Enforcement Reports (openFDA drug recall data), via Chartly (https://chart.ly/charts/why-are-drugs-recalled)"}