I learned through the news that a kind of salad I used to buy was recalled, right as I had sat down to dinner to start eating. Literally inches close to potential listeria.
As time passed this happened 4 more times with the same brand within 6 months. I kept hearing about it in news and stumbling across it on social media.
I knew there had a to be a better mechanism for knowing about product recalls and safety alerts from the Canadian Government. Unfortunately their mailing list and apps leave much to be desired, and are basically unusable.
So I thought of using the Open Government Data APIs and build my own solution, that would be able to send me emails and SMS on categories and keywords I defined. That's how Recall Monitor was born.