The hygiene of various foods is closely related to the health of consumers because foods can act as vehicles of infectious diseases. To determine if the sanitary qualities of poultry, meat, milk, eggs and related products were in accordance with the standards of the Food Sanitation Law promulgated by the Food and Drug Administration of Taiwan (TFDA), we randomly selected various conventional markets, supermarkets and night markets shopped at by the general population and purchased samples of various foods regularly consumed by such shoppers from them, including hot and readyto- eat foods. We analyzed 281 reddy to eat food specimens and found that the aerobic plate counts for 148 of them (46.3%) were greater than 105 CFU/g(mL), while 75 of the specimens (23.4%) were found to contain food-borne pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus and Salmonella species. Most of the food-borne pathogens were isolated from the ready-to-eat foods. This may be related to the poor hygiene behaviors of food processing personnel employed in factories or stores.