Food-borne pathogens are harmful bacteria that can cause food poisoning and induce diseases inside the body,and seriously threaten human health and environmental safety.In order to prevent and control the occurrences of food-borne diseases,the effective countermeasure is to carry out safety detection of pathogenic bacteria in foods.In this paper,a multiplex polymerase chain reaction(MPCR)method was used to rapidly detect four food-borne pathogenic bacteria in dairy products.The results showed the four bands of 274,221,482 and 108 bp were amplified without non-specific amplification,optimized PCR reaction and annealing temperature of 58 ℃,using the four pairs of primers that were de-signed according to the conserved sequences of the prfAA gene of Listeria monocytogenes,the gyrB gene of Bacillus cereus,the invA gene of Salmonella,and the stx2A gene of Escherichia coli O157∶H7 respectively..The minimum detection limits of the four pathogens reached up to 101-102 CFU/mL,respectively.The detection results of the MPCR method for 17 artificial milk samples contaminated with pathogens were completely consistent with those of the national standard method.It provided a practical method for the rapid,efficient and accurate detection of Listeria monocytogenes,Bacillus cereus,Salmonella and Escherichia coli O157∶H7 in dairy products and a good idea for the rapid detection of other pathogenic bacteria.