Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is an area of clinical medicine that uses aims to combine the best scientific evidence with practical experience to make the decision about a patient's outcome. The concept has been used in human medicine for the past 15-20 years and has expanded in include areas of evidence-based public health and evidence based nursing. In veterinary science and food safety, recent publications have discussed the need for evidence-based approaches to study design and literature review in agri-food public health to make informed decisions for food safety policy makers and other decision makers in food production continuum. The idea of formalizing the evidence-based approach to decision making is therefore relatively new to veterinary science and food safety.;Veterinary science and food safety differ greatly from clinical medicine in many important areas including the unit of concern, i.e. individual versus groups, prevention of outcomes rather than treatment of disease, the influence of publication bias and the availability of challenge models to assess outcomes. Therefore, translation of EBM concepts to veterinary science and food safety will require careful consideration of what is applicable and when are changes needed for these unique fields.;The aim of this thesis has been to apply some of the concepts of EBM to veterinary science and food safety using interventions designed for pre-harvest interventions in Salmonella in swine. Research is conducted so that science may reduce our uncertainty about the outcome and decisions. Individual research papers contribute a small amount to understanding. However, scientists should be able to evaluate a body of work on a topic and report what the body of work is "telling us". This formal approach to the evaluation of a body of work is a relatively new field in veterinary science and food safety. The aim is to translate the body of work into a format that makes it consumable by the end user. There are many methods of translating a body of scientific literature for decision makers such as risk assessment, expert opinion, narrative review, meta-analysis and the approach evaluated in this thesis i.e. systematic review which may include meta analysis.