Food-borne diseases are a widespread and growing public health and economic problem. Recent modifications in food production and processing practices and everchanging food habits of the consumer are important factors for the incidence of food-borne infections. Many recognized pathogens are of great concern today (e.g., Campylobacter jejuni, Escherichia coli O157:H7, and Listeria monocytogenes), and new challenges have appeared in the recent years.

An emerging issue that involves this field is the increasing problem of multidrug resistance in pathogenic, opportunistic, and spoilage bacteria, which can reach humans through the food chain. Moreover, as demonstrated by scientific evidence, genes for resistance may be transferred together with those encoding for virulence factors, a phenomenon that may lead to the appearance of microorganims with increased pathogenicity.

Despite chill chains, chemical preservatives, and a better understanding of microorganisms, food-borne diseases represent an important health problem for developed and developing countries. The consumer preferences are moving towards foods containing lower levels of chemical preservatives, maintaining characteristics of natural products. The aim of this special issue will be to define the state of the art in old and new microorganisms that currently pose a risk for food-borne diseases and to explore new frontiers in food conservation, with a particular focus on the biopreservation field. A new microbial challenge in food safety will be the use of natural substances endowed with antimicrobial capability (chitosan, essential oils, bacteriocins, etc.) or able to counteract structures such as biofilm (antibiofilm polysaccharides, antiquorum sensing medicinal plants, etc.). Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Ecology of food-borne pathogens: what microorganisms and what type of food
• New microbial risk in food field: emergent pathogens by "old" and "new" foods
• Food-borne pathogens: risks for immunocompromised individuals
• Microbial biofilms in food industries: formation risk and control
• Antibiotic-resistant bacteria in food: source and impact on human health
• LAB bacteriocins and their use in the food field
• New tools in food safety: biocontrol and bioconservation

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