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Data sources

ChooseWell doesn't generate its own data. It connects public and third-party records to the product or company you're looking at. Here is everywhere that information comes from. A page with a working link to every source is kept up to date automatically.

Political funding and lobbying

  • Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings: PAC receipts and contributions, with the party of each recipient
  • U.S. Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings: lobbying spend and the issues lobbied
  • IRS Form 8872 filings: 527 political organizations
  • State and local campaign-finance records from 46 states and cities, each from that state's own election or ethics agency
  • Open States and the congress-legislators dataset: party and committee rosters

Safety and recalls

  • openFDA and the FDA recall feed: food, drug, cosmetic and device recalls; OTC drug labels
  • USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service: meat, poultry and egg recalls
  • Consumer Product Safety Commission: consumer product recalls
  • National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: vehicle recalls and VIN decoding
  • Ingredient watch-lists: California Proposition 65, the EU cosmetics and food-additive rules, ECHA, Health Canada's Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist, IARC classifications, the FDA's Substances Added to Food inventory, and EPA Safer Choice

Product identity and nutrition

  • The Open Food Facts family of community databases (food, beauty, general products)
  • USDA FoodData Central
  • Open Library (books) and the IFPS produce-code list
  • A commercial barcode database, for products not yet in community sources

Company and ownership information

  • SEC EDGAR company filings
  • SAM.gov entity registrations: small, veteran-owned, woman-owned and Black-owned status
  • Wikidata: brand and parent-company relationships

How current is this data?

Federal political data refreshes weekly. State political data loads monthly, as each state publishes it. Safety, nutrition and product data update as the sources publish changes. None of it is real time; it is only as current as the original source, which is why every result links back to where it came from.

See Methodology for how this data becomes what you see on screen.