Microbial food cultures are considered as traditional food ingredients and are permitted in the production of foodstuffs all over the world under general food laws.
Commercially available microbial food cultures are sold as preparations, which are formulations, consisting of concentrates of one or more microbial species and/or strains including unavoidable media components carried over from the fermentation and components, which are necessary for their survival, storage, standardisation and to facilitate their application in the food production process.
Safety of microbial food cultures, depending on their characteristics and use, can be based on genus, species or strain levels.