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# Product Safety and Recall Overview

> How brands issue product safety notices: targeting affected products and batches, translating for every market, and surfacing recalls on the passport.

Product Safety and Recall is the module a brand uses when something is wrong with a product and consumers need to be told. It runs the full lifecycle of a safety communication, whether a full **recall**, a lower-severity **safety alert**, or a routine **product update**, from authoring through to the moment an affected consumer scans the product and sees the notice on its passport.

**tie*back***

is the system of record for the product, its identifiers, its production batches, and its passport,
so a notice can be targeted at exactly the units that are affected, translated for every market they
were sold in, and shown to consumers on the passport they already reach by scanning the product.

## Why It Matters

The EU **General Product Safety Regulation (Reg. (EU) 2023/988)** requires that when a product presents a risk, the consumer is given a clear recall notice: the product and the hazard are identified, the risk is explained, and the consumer is told what to do and what remedy is offered. Meeting that obligation manually, across languages, production batches, and channels, is slow and error-prone.

Because the product data already lives in **tie*back***, a recall can be:

* targeted precisely to the affected products and, where needed, specific production batches
* authored once and prepared in the language of each affected market
* published deliberately, with a defined live window
* shown to the consumer at the exact moment they check the product: the passport reached by scanning it

## How It Fits

Product Safety and Recall builds directly on the existing platform:

| Foundation        | Role in a notice                                                      | Learn more                                                                |
| ----------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Products**      | The catalogue records a notice can target                             | [Products](/product-module/products)                                      |
| **Identifiers**   | GTIN and related codes that identify the affected product             | [Identifiers](/product-module/identifiers)                                |
| **Batches**       | Production batches (GS1 batch/lot) let a notice target specific units | [Minting Overview](/minting/overview)                                     |
| **Localisations** | The target-market languages a notice is prepared in                   | [Localisations Overview](/localisations/overview)                         |
| **Passports**     | Where an active recall is shown to the consumer                       | [Consumer Experience](/passports/consumer-experience)                     |
| **Resolver**      | The scan that brings a consumer to the affected product               | [Resolver & GS1 Digital Link](/product-module/resolver-gs-1-digital-link) |

## Key Concepts

### Notice Kinds

Every communication in the module is a **notice**, and every notice is one of three kinds: a **recall**, a **safety alert**, or a **product update**. The kind sets what content is required and what wording is permitted; recalls carry the strictest requirements. See [Notices & Recall Model](/product-safety-and-recall/notices-recall-model).

### Targeted to Products and Batches

A notice targets one or more products, and for each product either every unit or specific production **batches**, identified by the real GS1 batch/lot code assigned when they were minted. A recall never affects units it does not apply to. See [Notices & Recall Model](/product-safety-and-recall/notices-recall-model#targeting).

### Author Once, Prepared for Every Market

The compliance team writes the consumer-facing content once in a base language. Each market the affected products are sold in gets its own language version, which passes the same language check as the base before the notice can be published. See [Localisations Overview](/localisations/overview).

### A Deliberate Live Window

Publishing is always a human action taken by an authorised user: **tie*back*** never publishes a notice automatically. At publication the brand sets an optional start and end date, and the notice's public status is derived from that window at the moment it is viewed.

### Shown on the Passport

When a consumer scans an affected product, an active recall is surfaced on that product's passport, in the consumer's market language, for as long as the notice is live. See [Consumer Experience](/product-safety-and-recall/consumer-experience).

## Current Scope

Today, Product Safety and Recall supports:

* recall, safety alert, and product update notices, with kind-specific required content and wording rules
* targeting by product and by production batch (GS1 batch/lot)
* a completeness and language check that must pass before publishing
* a defined live window with a derived status: Draft, Scheduled, Live, Expired, Revoked
* recall imagery published alongside the notice
* surfacing of active recalls on the affected product's passport

The following are not currently part of the externally released feature set:

* **automated translation of a recall into every target-market language**: rolling out
* **targeting by individual serial number**: planned
* **programmatic (API) management of notices**: not currently exposed; notices are managed in the application

## Related Docs

* [Notices & Recall Model](/product-safety-and-recall/notices-recall-model)
* [Consumer Experience](/product-safety-and-recall/consumer-experience)
* [Localisations Overview](/localisations/overview)
* [Products](/product-module/products)
* [Minting Overview](/minting/overview)
* [Consumer Experience (Passports)](/passports/consumer-experience)