The scope of this paper is to review work connected with accelerated ripening of dry fermented sausages by addition of proteolytic enzymes. An overview of the following topics is given: practical sausage experiments with addition of various proteinases of bacterial origin, including data from sensory, biochemical and gc/ms analyses; biochemical and genetic characterization of the enzyme shown to be most useful in these experiments, the serine proteinase from Lactobacillus paracasei subsp. paracasei NCDO 151; experiments to transform starter cultures with the genes for production of this proteinase and proposals for future work in this field.