Technical Abstract: Food borne pathogens sicken more than 76 million Americans each year. Many of these illnesses come from foodstuffs contaminated by animal manure or from meat products. Steps that have been taken in the slaughter plant to reduce the spread of food borne pathogenic bacteria have been very effective; however meat products are still the source of food-borne bacterial human illnesses. Increasing numbers of human illnesses caused by E. coli O157:H7 have also been related to contact with animals at county and/or state fairs, or to water supplies contaminated by run-off from cattle farms. Thus strategies that target food borne pathogenic bacteria in the animal on the farm or in the feedlot have great potential to improve food safety and reduce human illnesses. In this review, we describe a broad range of live-animal intervention strategies, both pro-biotic and anti-biotic. Additionally, we examine the effects of diet and management strategies on food borne pathogenic bacterial populations. Also, the use of antibiotics in food animals to decrease food borne pathogens will be examined. Overall, the concurrent use of several of these pre-slaughter intervention strategies could synergistically decrease human illnesses by erecting additional obstacles thus creating a multiple-hurdle approach to improving food safety.