Future Directions in Food Safety

The recent success that the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service has had in 2003 and 2004 of reversing the steadily increasing trend in Class 1 recalls is welcomed. In agreement with those statistics are the FSIS microbiological results for Escherichia coli O157:H7 in raw ground beef, which also showed a decrease in 2003. But there is much work to be done in food safety and much more to achieve. It is imperative that while addressing food-safety issues, we should understand the role that the environmental microbiology, public health epidemiology, aerobiology, molecular microbial ecology, occupational health, industrial processes, municipal water quality, and animal health have on food safety. Although it is a difficult task, a concerted effort by industry, academic, and governmental researchers can accomplish the goal. Here we discuss the future directions and applications in the distribution and spread of foodborne hazards, methods for microbial detection and differentiation, intervention strategies for farm pathogen reduction, targeting waste at animal production sites, considerations on antimicrobial resistance, food-safety storage and preparation strategies, food irradiation, new and emerging food-safety hazards, and quantitative microbial food-safety risk assessment. Although this does not comprise an exhaustive list of food-safety issues, these are the areas that, we think, require considerable attention by researchers. Not only we need to strive to improve food safety through new strategies, processes, and applications, but we also need to be flexible and observant to readily handle the new and emerging food-safety problems, whether they are within our borders or global. At present, the United States has one of the safest food-safety systems in place. However, although this is not a time for complacency, our research endeavors should be designed to keep pace with the food-safety needs of the future.