The Center is composed of the MSU/USDA Food Safety/Toxicology Containment Facility, the MSU/USDA Food Safety/Toxicology Laboratory Building, and the state-funded Animal Infectious Disease Containment Facility. It brings together government scientists and faculty from a number of colleges and centers to perform the collaborative research necessary to detect, analyze, and study a wide range of hazards to food safety. These studies span the entire spectrum of food producing plants and animals.

The Center also supports ongoing research efforts of various University departments such as Food Service and Human Nutrition, Crop and Soil Sciences, Horticulture, Biochemistry, and the medical colleges of Human, Osteopathic and Veterinary Medicine.

This USDA-funded Food Safety/Toxicology Containment Facility houses research containment laboratories that support food chain toxin research. Research activities include studies in both aquatic and animal toxins. Also included is the Animal Infectious Disease Containment Facility, a state funded addition to the building designed specifically for the study of animal infectious diseases.

Modular exposure/observation units are equipped with individual controls for temperature, light, and humidity, each of which can be used for a variety of different animal species and different toxicants.

The Food Safety/Toxicology Laboratory, also USDA funded, serves as lab and support space for the Food Safety/Toxicology Containment Facility. It provides sample analysis and small animal, cell culture and invitro studies.

Located in a separate building from the Containment Facility so that students and the public will not be near the area of greatest risk of potential exposure to toxic chemicals, the building also houses the Maher McCormick cancer research laboratory.