The meat industry is a large and important consumer of spices, herbs and dried vegetable seasonings. These commodities are used to season cured and processed meats, but also added to flavor raw meat preparations. In the meat industry, spices and dried vegetables containing high loads of microbes are considered a risk for spoilage bacterial contamination both directly and indirectly via contaminated ingredients, surfaces and processing line (Cerveny et al., 2010; Coggins, 2001). Whilst the heat treatment of curedmeat products is usually enough to significantly reduce the numbers of vegetative spoilage bacteria, this is not the case with seasoned raw meat preparations, such as marinated meats and hamburger patties. The shelf life of such raw meat products is often limited by psychrotrophic lactic acid bacteria (LAB) growing and causing deteriorations (Nieminen et al., 2012; Susiluoto, 2003). The fact that plants and vegetables are natural habitats for many LAB, has raised concerns if spices and dried vegetables are sources of spoilage LAB contamination in the meat chain. However, little is known about LAB on spices and dry vegetables, and in particular, if spices may introduce spoilage LAB into the meat processing chain.