Food safety aspects concerning traditional foods

A significant challenge for traditional food production is to improve its competitiveness by identifying innovations that guarantee the safety of the products, while at the same time meeting general consumer demands and specific consumer expectations towards traditional food (European Research on Traditional Food, EC, DG_Research, 2007). Therefore, there is a real need to study traditional foods in order to preserve important elements of European culture and, if possible, enrich and improve the diet across the whole continent. The following chapter will cover aspects related with the safety aspects of the traditional products including legislation, the hazards coming from raw materials as well as hazards from processing. Some technological solutions for making traditional foods safer in longer time will be presented. Even it is compulsory to follow the authentic recipe and technology; some small innovation would be necessary, for example, in packaging for better preservation of the traditional foods in order to meet consumer’s demands in having larger quantities of traditional foods. Technological innovations must be implemented in the companies always maintaining the traditional methodologies but assuring food safety and increasing shelf life of traditional foods.