During the process of food processing and storage, there are numerous factors that induce foodborne pathogens to enter into the VBNC state. In general, the factors (physical and chemical) create worse bacteria growth conditions that may stress the bacterial cells into the VBNC state. The physical factors that induce the VBNC state of bacteria mainly include low/high temperature (Dinu and Bach, 2013), drying (Barron and Forsythe, 2007), irradiation (Zhang et al., 2015), oxidative stress (Oh et al., 2015), starvation (Lothigius et al., 2010), a pulsed electric field (Rowan, 2004), pulsed light and high pressure carbon dioxide (HPCD) (Feng et al., 2016). The chemical factors include food preservatives and disinfectants (Oliver, 2010; Ding et al., 2016).