Abstract: Food safety is a major concern for human. Various detection methods for foodborne pathogenic bacteria have become the focus of studies nowadays. Although polymerase chain reaction (PCR), as the most wildly used detection methods for pathogen, has overcome the shortcomings of time-consuming traditional method, the need for accurate temperature control greatly limits its application in field testing. Recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA), as a new isothermal amplification method, has developed rapidly in recent ten years. This method has broken up the barrier of PCR, getting rid of thermal cycle and expensive instruments, which is more suitable for insufficient resources on-site detection. In this manuscript, the mechanism of RPA and the probe design method are provided. Besides, the application of RPA in detecting foodborne pathogenic bacteria is reviewed. The hot topics of RPA development and the prospect of RPA technology development in the future are summarized.