Quick and sensitive detection of foodborne pathogenic bacteria is a key to control food safety. Routine detection methods are so cumbersome and time-consuming that it is difficult to meet the needs of foodborne disease prevention and control. With the development of spectroscopic technologies, researchers have established many new techniques to detect bacteria. They are fast, simple, specific, sensitive, and with low-consumption. Latest spectroscopy research and development trends of foodborne pathogens have been summarized in this paper. It is proposed that single-cell level real-time and fast unmarked automatic identification of individual bacterial cells will be widely applied in the field of non-destructive testing of foodborne pathogenic bacteria.