The consumption of food infected with diseases can lead to serious human health problems, violent gastrointestinal disease and potentially death, and to disastrous economic consequences to the agri-food industry due to food recalls. This project contains a research and development consortium composed of experts from academia, federal government agencies, food testing industry (PBR Laboratories Inc.), and a molecular diagnostics company (GenePOC Inc.). The ultimate goail is to develop and validate a rapid molecular microbiology test method enabling the detection, in artificially contaminated ground beef, of seven STEC/VTEC that are of public interest, by real-time PCR in less than 8 hours, instead of a minimum turnaround time of 3-4 days required by current methodologies.