# Microbiome-Based Interventions for Food Safety and Environmental Health
## 1 Introduction  
Microbiome-based interventions encompass a range of strategies aimed at modulating microbial communities to promote health and environmental sustainability [1, 2, 3, 4]. \"Microbiome-based interventions\" is an umbrella term encompassing all strategies aimed at altering microbiota for beneficial outcomes across health, food, and environmental contexts. On the other hand, \"microbiome-based therapeutics (MBT)\" is a specific subset focused on targeted applications to prevent or treat diseases, especially within clinical or medical frameworks. Hence, this review uses the term MBT within the broader context of microbiome interventions applicable to both food safety and environmental health. These interventions include approaches such as fecal microbiota transplantation, administration of probiotics or prebiotics, dietary modifications, and the use of bacterial consortia [1]. The term has sometimes been used to describe microbiome-based solutions for approaches to address new and existing threats to food security, nutrition, health, and agrifood systems' sustainability [5]. Specifically, MBT is the modification and application of microbial communities with the potential to improve health and prevent diseases [6; 7]. Microbiome-based interventions leverage the complexity of symbiotic relationships between diverse microbial communities--bacteria, viruses, fungi, and archaea--to enhance food safety and environmental health, targeting challenges like pathogen contamination in food production and ecosystem degradation [8]. For example, probiotics reduce _Salmonella_ in livestock, ensuring safer meat [9], while bioremediation microbes detoxify oil spills, supporting clean soil and water for agriculture [10]. The ability of microbial communities to interact dynamically with their hosts and habitat provides a strong structural basis for their therapeutic potential [8]. In food systems, MBT minimizes spoilage and foodborne infections, with long-read sequencing pinpointing pathogens like _E. coli_ in beef [11] and synthetic biology engineering microbes to degrade pollutants faster [12]. The role of microbiomes in food safety is critical, as they regulate pathogen growth and food quality. The microbiome is a complex ecosystem of microorganisms, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and archaea, that inhabit a particular environment, such as the human gut or the soil. Probiotics and prebiotics alter animal gut microbiomes, reducing pathogens and improving meat safety [9], while artificial intelligence (AI) predicts contamination risks across supply chains [13]. In humans, the gut microbiome aids digestion, metabolism, and immune regulation, with dysbiosis linked to health issues like obesity and diabetes [14]. However, this review focuses on microbiome-based interventions' broader applications, such as preventing foodborne illnesses and restoring ecosystems, rather than human health alone. From an agricultural/environmental perspective, mycorrhizal fungi are essential for plants to grow and stay healthy, and thus microbiome-based techniques such as biofertilization or biocontrol use friendly fungi to increase crop yields while reducing the need for artificial pesticides and fertilizers, as they stimulate the plants towards more environment-friendly farming methods [15]. Microbiome interventions enhance food safety by tackling pathogens at the source. For instance, bacteriophages target resistant bacteria in food production, curbing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) [16], while cultrumics uncovers unclururable microbes for novel applications [17]. Microbiomes in the environment are very important for sustaining healthy ecosystems through their roles in the formation of soil structure, nutrient cycling, and bioremediation [10]. For example, the utilization of microbial agents, communities, or their metabolites in bioremediation transform contaminants (such as oil spills or heavy metal pollution) in the environment into less toxic compounds that are more easily degraded or removed from the environment [18; 19].