The rapid control and prevention of diseases caused by foodborne pathogens is one of the existing food safety supervision issues in both developed and developing countries,which has widely attracted attention from all sections of the community.Up to now,there are some limitations on commonly used methods for detection of foodborne pathogens such as complex steps,time consuming,low sensitivity,poor selectivity,etc.Therefore,development of rapid and reliable methods for detection of foodborne pathogens is still a hot research area for the sake of food safety and public health.As a novel spectroscopic detection technology,surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy(SERS) has shown a broad prospect in the detection of foodborne pathogens with the advantages of high sensitivity,selectivity,rapidness and non destructive detection.In this article,the background and enhanced mechanism of SERS are briefly introduced first,then the SERS active nanostructures used for foodborne pathogen detection are summarized.Furthermore,a comprehensive overview on research progress of direct and indirect SERS methods applied to detection of foodborne pathogens in the past five years is provided,as well as the combination of SERS and other techniques.Meanwhile,the advantages and disadvantages of different SERS substrates and methods are discussed.Finally,the current challenges of SERS technology applied in practical applications are listed in this article,and the possible development trends of SERS in the field of foodborne pathogens detection in the future are put forward.