We are in a new era of studying the microbial ecology of foods. Last year we heard several talks on food microbiomes and learned how the microbial taxa in your products can be determined using gene sequencing and presented in a pie chart or bar graph format all without the need for culture. Yet, as we begin this journey and use this powerful tool, even more, we must begin to ask some obvious questions important to the practicing food microbiologist. Questions such as what is the real meaning of finding DNA sequences of bacterial or fungal taxa in an extract of food?  Does this data provide a grounds to take corrective actions should a pathogen sequence wind up in a sample community description? What if that sequence was derived from a non-viable cell? These and other questions you pose will be explored by a roundtable of experts in the techniques of microbiome analysis.  The format is to be as interactive and free form as possible so that the audience is allowed a high degree of participation.