Last Dec. 15th, the 2016 Governmental report on food and drink inspections was delivered in Italy.
These inspections refer to the supervision on food products of any origin marketed in Italy and shipped to another country and they are carried out during production, processing, distribution, storage, transportation, and marketing. In 2016, 279,897 plants were inspected, -namely 19.9% of the total- and almost 420,000 inspections were carried out. Only 931 samples out of 40,000 analyzed were not compliant.

The greatest number of non-conformities concerned microbiology, mainly in meat and milk samples. The highest percentage of microbiological irregularities was recorded for Salmonella (33.5%), followed by L. monocytogenes (21, 41%) and E. coli (14.73%), including the E. coli STEC group.

Source: Italian Ministry of Health