with prebiotic”. Furthermore, “food/supplement with symbiotic” is defined as the association of a food with probiotics with a food with prebiotics. In accordance with the recommendations published by FAO/WHO (http://www.who.int/foodsafety/ publications/fs_management/probiotics2/en/index. html), the Italian guidelines point out the need to identify and characterise probiotic microorganims as species and strain through molecular genetic techniques and o