Introduction to Preharvest Food Safety

This introductory article provides an overview of preharvest food safety activities and initiatives for the past 15 years. The section on traditional areas of preharvest food safety focuses on significant scientific advancements that are a culmination of collaborative efforts (both public health and agriculture) and significant research results. The highlighted advancements provide the foundation for exploring future preharvest areas and for improving and focusing on more specific intervention/control/prevention strategies. Examples include Escherichia coli and cattle, Salmonella and Campylobacter in poultry, and interventions and prevention and control programs. The section on "nontraditional" preharvest food safety areas brings attention to potential emerging food safety issues and to future food safety research directions. These include organic production, the FDA's Produce Rule (water and manure), genomic sequencing, antimicrobial resistance, and performance metrics. The concluding section emphasizes important themes such as strategic planning, coordination, epidemiology, and the need for understanding food safety production as a continuum. Food safety research, whether at the pre- or postharvest level, will continue to be a fascinating complex web of foodborne pathogens, risk factors, and scientific and policy interactions. Food safety priorities and research must continue to evolve with emerging global issues, emerging technologies, and methods but remain grounded in a multidisciplinary, collaborative, and systematic approach.