Sampling is necessary every time inferences are to be made to take informed, optimal decisions in science, technology, industry, trade and commerce. For reasons extensively addressed over the last two decades, some fields, normally those where good sampling practices are a source of economic gain such as the mining/minerals/metals industrial sectors, explicate the role of sampling more than others. This is not the case within the realm of food and feed safety assessment where sampling continues—still today—to be perceived more as an economic burden and a technical necessity to be fulfilled because of regulatory demands, rather than a need to ensure reliable evidence to support management and regulatory decisions. This is true today and will become even more central in the future to address the challenges posed by the accelerating climate crisis, resources depletion and increasing food demand. Risk assessment and sampling are both probabilistic disciplines, the first devoted to estimate and minimise safety risks, the latter devoted to estimate and mitigate sampling risks (the effects of sampling errors). Here we offer an exposé with the aim of positioning TOS as an essential disciplines and practical tool needed to ensure the best possible estimation of risks in support of safety decision-making and risk management in all of food and feed sciences, technology, industry, trade, commerce, and society at large. We demonstrate that sampling plays an integral, but an often much overlooked role in all these fields.