Foodborne illnesses and intoxications caused by foodborne pathogens continue to cause harm to millions of people all over the world, in both developed and developing countries. Meat products are traditionally considered major sources of foodborne pathogens infections and are often contaminated with viral and bacterial pathogens such as Salmonella, Campylobacter, Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes, E. coli O157:H7, and Norovirus. The emergence and prevalence of multidrug resistance among foodborne pathogens complicated the treatment of their infections and increased the number of deaths resulting from such illnesses.

The recent advances in the molecular detection of foodborne pathogens in food and, in particular, retail meat products enhanced the quick detection of the microbial contamination of these important food products. With the recent advances in next-generation sequencing, whole-genome sequencing (WGS), and transcriptomic analysis using RNA-Seq, these techniques are becoming excellent tools to investigate how these foodborne pathogens survive in the retail meat matrices.

This special issue welcomes original research and review articles focussed on the comprehensive evaluation of retail meats with regard to their microbial food safety, and the recent advances in the technology developed to facilitate the timely detection of foodborne pathogens. It also aims to explore strategies to control these foodborne pathogens in retail meats, to improve the quality of the food product, help design the necessary preventive measures to reduce such risky contamination, and hence improve the quality of the food product.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Detection, prevalence, multidrug resistance, and diversity of foodborne pathogens in retail meats
• Molecular and innovative detection methods of foodborne pathogens in retail meat products
• Genomic and transcriptomic studies related to microbial contamination detection, survival, and growth of foodborne pathogens in the various retail meats matrices
• The design of strategies to control foodborne pathogens in retail meat products and the development of preventive measures to reduce contamination and hence improve the food safety of retail meats
• The influence of recent advances in the technology used in meat processing on the contamination, survival, and growth of foodborne pathogens