The future prospects of probiotics lie in the successful application of individual strains with specific beneficial effects on the host. This development implies that not only the most robust strains are selected but also strains with a promising probiotic function with moderate or high sensitivity to processing stresses. This also means an increasing variety of probiotic strains with different functions. Therefore the processing of probiotics becomes an important issue. The strains have to be cultivable and proper growth conditions have to be known. Another very important step in...