Abstract: Food safety problems seriously affect human health, so it is necessary to develop efficient, convenient, and fast food safety detection methods. Metal-organic framework materials (MOFs) are new porous complexes with uniform pore size, adjustable particle size, high specific surface area, and good thermal stability, which can be synthesized according to requirements and have been widely used in food safety detection. Composite materials prepared assembly by MOFs and other functional materials (ionic liquids, quantum dots, graphene, magnetic nanoparticles, gold or silver nanoparticles, etc), making MOFs had advantages based on the original material with other excellent performances including conductive, light, magnetic, catalytic. It has attracted a lot of attention in sensing detection and sample pretreatment. The application progress of MOFs and their composites as sample pretreatment materials or sensing materials in the field of food safety detection were systematically reviewed, such as agricultural and veterinary drug residues, illegal additives, heavy metal ions, organic polutants, and microbial toxins, and its development fulture was prospected (56 ref. cited).