Ten years of food complaints about cereal products

Abstract: More than two hundred food complaints, coming from food industries, food stores, and customers, were analyzed in our Department of Food, Environmental and Nutritional Sciences (University of Milano, Italy) in ten years. Most of food packages were delivered already open; sometimes the food samples were delivered without packaging. In the case of packaged food, infestation was subsequent to packaging. Cereal products comprised 48% of the samples. Cake and biscuits, pasta, bread and crackers, rice, flour, ravioli, and others (spelt, corn crackers, cereals soup) comprised 32.4%, 31.4%, 11.4%, 8.6%, 7.6%, 3.8%, and 4.8%, respectively, of the cereal products. Lepidoptera were 47% of pests found; Plodia interpunctella (Hbn.) was in 88% of samples where Lepidoptera were found. Coleoptera were found in 34% of the samples; Sitophilus oryzae (L.) was in 42% of samples that contained Coleoptera. Nine percent of complaints were rodent filth, mainly droppings. The remaining 10% was represented by other pests or filths.