In the wake of a terrible E. coli food poisoning outbreak, a group of food scientists decided to gear their research towards improving the safety of meat and poultry, whilst reaching out to food industry stakeholders and forming a collaboration known as the Consortium of Food Process Validation Experts (CFPVE). As part of this important collaboration, CFPVE scientists are advocating the use of non-pathogenic bacterial substitutes for process validation in processing plant environments.