After the discovery and presentation of VBNC cells in 1982, researchers found different species of bacteria that can exist in a VBNC state in recent years. For example, Oliver reviewed 52 species of VBNC bacteria in 2005 (Oliver, 2005), and added four new species in his review of pathogenic bacteria published 5 years later (Oliver, 2010). Moreover, 51 species of human pathogens have been reported to exist in the VBNC state (Li et al., 2014). Recently, Pinto et al. (2015) presented a list of 68 species of pathogenic bacteria in the VBNC state which was described. An increasing number of VBNC cells have been found in various environments, which cannot be ignored because of their negative impact on public health. Food is frequently exposed to a limited environment during processing, transportation and storage, which can provide more opportunities for the induction of VBNC cells. Unfortunately, it has been widely documented that foodborne pathogens are induced to enter the VBNC state in various foods, such as grapefruit juice (Nicolò et al., 2010), milk products (Gunasekera et al., 2002; Barron and Forsythe, 2007), and vegetables (Dinu and Bach, 2011, 2013). Additionally, most foodborne pathogens can be induced to enter the VBNC state in response to environmental stress. For example, E. coli O157:H7 VBNC cells were induced by low temperature on the surface of lettuce and spinach plants (Dinu and Bach, 2013) and by UV disinfection (Zhang et al., 2015). Campylobacter jejuni VBNC cells were observed under oxygen-rich (Oh et al., 2015) and low temperature conditions (Chaisowwong et al., 2012). The cells of L. monocytogenes entered a VBNC state within 24 h in the presence of potassium sorbate at pH 4.0 (Cunningham et al., 2009). L. monocytogenes and Bacillus cereus were also changed into VBNC cells by treatment with a pulsed electric field (Rowan, 2004). The above examples fully illustrate that food samples cannot be considered free from pathogens if the plate counting result is negative. Therefore, an understanding of the VBNC state is essential to comprehend the challenges associated with and how to avoid the risk of VBNC pathogens.