This Brief discusses aspects of the increasingly complex production of legal and reliable food
products of non-animal origin. It introduces to the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in the
USA (from January 2011) which requires the food industry to follow risk-based approaches with
stronger self-regulation of food safety through measures such as the foreign supplier
verification programs (FSVPs). The Brief addresses important chemical hazards of vegetable
products: their peculiar microbial ecology that can become responsible for the occurrence of
specific foodborne disease outbreaks and the chemistry of the involved neurotoxins and other
dangerous molecules that can potentially lead to lethal pathological reactions. Finally the
Brief also critically discusses the technology of ready-to-eat vegetable products and chemical
and physical modifications used for packed products (respiration of vegetables colorimetric
modifications etc.).
