The frequent outbreak of food safety incidents caused by foodborne pathogens have a huge impact on public health and social economy. Developing rapid and efficient detection methods is an effective means of ensuring food safety. CRISPR/Cas, composed of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated protein (Cas), is an immune system widely present in bacteria and archaea, which can effectively recognize and cut exogenous nucleic acids. Therefore, the rapid and efficient detection of pathogenic bacteria can be achieved by using the CRISPR/Cas system. This review introduces CRISPR/Cas systems with and without nucleic acid amplification, summarizes their application for detection of various foodborne pathogens, and discusses their advantages, limitations and future trends. This review will provide a reference for the establishment of more efficient detection methods to effectively reduce food safety problems caused by foodborne pathogens.