A 3-year national retail market survey was made to determine the sanitary quality of ground and unground oregano, ground nutmeg and ground cinnamon. The official methods of the Association of Official Analytical Chemists were used to count light filth such as insect fragments, rodent hair fragments, feather barbules, mites, aphids and thrips. Insect fragments were the most frequently encountered defect, with count means ranging from 27.9 to 265.7. The percent of samples containing insect fragments ranged from 92.0 to 97.5 for unground and ground oregano, respectively. Other counts ranged as follows: rodent hair fragments, 0 to 703; feather barbules, 0 to 99; mites, 0 to 52; thrips, 0 to 95; aphids, 0 to 209.