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 that \nwere used to identify out-of-control data, address appropriate corrective actions, and finally promote quality \nimprovements by setting customized dynamic control limits. Meals were individually analyzed using the alternative Micro \nBiological Survey method, in parallel with the conventional plating method, in order to propose an efficient, simplified, \nand suitable approach that could be useful for small industries to monitor constantly food quality.