ILSI Europe has developed a new framework that allows food businesses to rank the microbial risks of dried ingredients, giving manufacturers and hospitality suppliers a structured method to compare hazards across ingredient types.

Dried ingredients — from herbs, spices and teas to dried fruits, vegetable powders and milk powders — have repeatedly featured in European food-safety incidents, because low water activity does not eliminate all pathogens and contamination can survive or persist through the drying process. The ILSI Europe framework responds to that operational reality: rather than treating all dried ingredients as equally risky, it gives food-industry quality and safety teams a way to prioritise which ingredients demand the tightest controls.

What does the framework do?

The framework ranks microbial risks of dried ingredients. For food manufacturers, that translates into a repeatable, evidence-based tool for supplier audits, raw-material specifications and hazard analysis under HACCP-based food-safety management systems.

For European hospitality operators, the practical value sits one step downstream. Chains, contract caterers and purchasing groups increasingly demand documented risk assessments from their ingredient suppliers. A common ranking methodology makes those documents comparable across vendors and across borders, simplifying procurement decisions and supporting due-defence positions in the event of an incident.

ILSI Europe, the European branch of the International Life Sciences Institute, brings together industry scientists, regulators and academics in working groups that produce peer-reviewed guidance for the food sector. Frameworks of this type typically feed into industry codes of practice, audit criteria used by certification bodies, and ultimately the hazard analyses that EU food-business operators are legally required to maintain under Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 on the hygiene of foodstuffs.

Why dried ingredients need separate treatment

Drying is a preservation step, not a kill step for every microorganism. Salmonella in particular can survive drying and persist in low-moisture foods for long periods, and several documented European outbreaks have traced back to dried or low-moisture products. Spore-forming bacteria and certain toxigenic fungi add further hazard categories that behave differently in dried matrices than in fresh or chilled ingredients.

A ranking framework forces safety teams to separate hazard identification (which microorganisms matter for which ingredient) from risk estimation (how likely and how severe), and to document the reasoning. That discipline matters for hospitality businesses assembling complex supply chains: a spice blend, a dried-vegetable garnish and a milk-powder base each carry distinct microbial profiles, and a single generic assessment misses the differences.

What does this mean for operators and suppliers?

For industrial suppliers of dried ingredients, adoption of a common framework shortens the path to demonstrating control. Instead of bespoke risk narratives for each customer, suppliers can align their documentation to a recognised methodology — a meaningful efficiency when audits multiply across retail, wholesale and foodservice clients.

For hospitality groups and contract caterers, the framework strengthens the technical basis of supplier approval programmes. Purchasing teams can request risk rankings as part of tender documentation, and food-safety leads can use them to set monitoring frequency, incoming-goods checks and traceability requirements proportionate to the ingredient's ranked risk rather than applying uniform, costlier controls everywhere.

What happens next?

The framework now moves from publication into industry practice. Expect large ingredient suppliers and food-safety certification schemes to reference it in audit criteria and specification templates over the coming procurement cycles, with hospitality purchasing consortia following once supplier documentation catches up. Operators buying dried ingredients at scale should ask their suppliers whether their hazard assessments align with the ILSI Europe methodology — and when they plan to close the gap if they do not.