Microbiological research has been and continues to be central to meeting the global challenges of food security and food safety, defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization [1] as ‘when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’. However, meeting the challenges of our future food supply is exacerbated by key drivers and constraints, including:

• Population dynamics
   
• Climate change
   
• Energy usage
   
• Mineral availability
   
• Water availability
   
• Globalisation

The population is set to exceed 9 billion by 2050 and demand for food is likely to increase further because of growing affluence and urbanisation. Achieving sustainable supplies of safe, nutritious foods with minimal impact on the environment and animal welfare is therefore vital. To achieve sustainable agriculture, the issues of maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services have to be addressed alongside increasing food production. However, food security is not just about increasing food productivity; it’s also about wasting less. The UN estimates global harvests and food chain losses – before even reaching the shop shelves – at around 1,400 calories per person, per day [7]. More than 25% of the food that is bought is not consumed; instead, it is wasted because of delays in the food chain, poor storage and human behaviour [16].

In 2011, a major 2-year study from the UK Government Office for Science ‘Foresight’ programme The Future of Food and Farming [2] was published outlining the emerging issues and challenges to global food security and safety. The Microbiology Society, in partnership with other leading microbiology and microbiology related organisations, the Society for Applied Microbiology, the British Mycological Society and the British Society for Plant Pathology, is concerned that the role of microbiology in meeting these challenges is poorly understood and under-represented at a time when funding for universities and institutes has been cut leading to a shortage of expertise, in many important microbiology disciplines, across the UK [6].

History records that microbiological research has delivered major advances in food security and safety. Important milestones include:

• Identification and application of safe processes for food preservation, such as canning and pasteurisation, and understanding the biology of pathogenic and spoilage microbes to reduce their transmission in the food chain, leading to developments of safer foods with a longer shelf life.
   
• Exploiting antimicrobial substances produced by naturally occurring microbes as weapons against plant and animal pathogens.
   
• Vaccine development to improve the health of livestock and reduce transmission of animal pathogens to humans.
   
• Producing novel food products, including probiotics and nutritionally enhanced food through fermentation.
   
• Exploiting microbial processes to manage or reduce waste.

Now, and in the future, microbiology research and development will play a profoundly important role in sustaining and improving food production, food safety and environmental quality while reducing waste. Understanding the activities of microbes at all steps in the process of plant and animal production, soil and water management, and the harvesting, storage and processing of agricultural products is necessary. Microbial communities play a key role in maintaining soil health and productivity, in the fermentation and degradation of plant biomass material to produce both food and fuel, and in the production of novel foods and feeds. Microbial communities also promote and maintain gut health in animals. The introduction of ’omic technologies have enabled the experimental study of such communities previously not achievable. For example, intervention strategies may have unforeseen consequences, such as knock-on effects of manipulation of one microbe on the behaviour of the community as a whole, and it is now possible to explore this experimentally and in detail.

Improvements in food security will bring significant socioeconomic benefits. For every 1% reduction in crop pests and diseases it has been estimated that an extra 25 million people potentially could be fed [9]. Livestock contribute significantly to the livelihoods of nearly 700 million of the world’s poor [13]; therefore, improvements to animal health via the provision of new vaccines and antibiotics have the potential to alleviate poverty substantially, as evidenced by the recent eradication of rinderpest, which is estimated to have saved the African economy US$1bn per annum [17]. Moreover, animals are recognised as the principle source of new diseases affecting humans. A recent study shows that over 60% of 335 emerging infectious diseases in humans from the last seven decades are zoonoses [14], and intensification of animal and crop production will increase opportunities for the evolution and spread of harmful microbes. An understanding of the activities of microbes in food animals and crops, and of the traits that allow them to infect humans, is therefore vital to improve food safety.

It needs to be recognised that there are key overarching factors which impact on microbiological activity, including:

• Microbes do not respect international boundaries and consequently food-borne pathogens, and also animal and plant diseases, such as foot-and-mouth disease, classical swine fever, coffee leaf rust and soybean rust, can be spread rapidly worldwide via trade, travel or arthropod vectors, depending on the pathogen, to new geographical areas. Moreover some microbes move between animals and humans, introducing diseases and resistances to antibiotics.
   
• In their natural habitat, microbes live in diverse, complex, interdependent communities, the ecology of which must be fully understood if we are to eradicate disease and exploit the beneficial role that microbes play in achieving food security.
   
• Many microbes have the capacity to evolve rapidly to become better suited to their environment, not necessarily to our benefit, thereby changing their behaviour and meaning that continual vigilance is required. Such evolution can allow microbes to escape control by drugs or vaccines, meaning that diseases that were once considered under control may re-emerge.

To maximise the benefit of any research it must be possible for microbiologists to carry out their research in target animals or crops, with less reliance on surrogate rodent-and cell-based assays, despite the high cost of contained accommodation for such work.