While the US food supply is one of the safest in the world, people still get sick from eating contaminated foods. Food product contamination with foodborne organisms causes significant economic loss for animal production systems and negatively impacts public health.
Mission
To benefit the American consumer and the livestock industry, the Food Safety and Enteric Pathogens Unit investigates the interactions of pathogenic and non-pathogenic bacteria with each other, with intestinal tissues of their animal host, and with the farm environment. Scientific knowledge and advanced technologies generated from this basic research are used to develop intervention strategies to reduce the prevalence of human foodborne pathogens, animal pathogens, and antibiotic resistant bacteria in livestock.