Food Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal

“Ready-to-eat” is defined as the status of the food being ready for immediate consumption. For some ready-toeat foods, legal microbiological criteria exist, and in addition different national guidelines are available to complement
\nlegally enforceable standards. Control charts are used to statistically study results of a manufacturing process over a
\nperiod of time with the aim to demonstrate if the process is under control. The current research examined the
\nmicrobiological quality of 177 ready-to-eat food samples in the catering cooperative group “La Cascina,” in Latium,
\nItaly, during a period of one year (2014–2015). Contamination trends were reported as individual control charts…