A mini-symposium on “Culture Independent Diagnostics” was organized during the IAFP 2013 Annual Meeting. The topic is of utmost interest to the food safety stakeholders as culture independent methods are emerging for microbial diagnostic applications in food. These methods do not require cultural isolation of pathogens and thus are unconventional for routine testing in food microbiology laboratories. This follow-up roundtable is organized to further discuss the dilemma that lies among the different stakeholders on various threats vs. opportunities for food safety and public health surveillance through these culture independent methods. Panelists for the roundtable representing stakeholders in food safety including the USDA and USFDA would discuss various concerns such as validation and verification requirements, routine laboratory testing including those requiring cultural isolates, outbreak investigation, public health surveillance and management, and global information sharing, etc. Representative questions that will be addressed during the discussion are: • What is the scope of culture-independent methods? How does it differ among different stake-holders? • What are key opportunities for food industry and public health agencies when using culture independent methods over the existing microbiological methods? • What are key challenges when using culture independent methods over the existing microbiological methods? • How will public health surveillance be performed including foodborne outbreak events if culture independent methods are applied?