The American Biological Safety Association (ABSA) was founded in 1984 to promote biological safety as an essential principle and serve the needs of biosafety professionals. The association's goals are to represent the interests and desires of practitioners of biosafety, and to be a dispenser of biosafety information.
The concept of biological safety (or biosafety) has paralleled the development of the science of microbiology and its extension into new and related areas including tissue culture, recombinant DNA, animal studies, molecular biology, synthetic biology, and biotechnology. The knowledge and skill gained by microbiologists necessary to isolate, manipulate, and propagate pathogenic microorganisms required parallel development of containment principles, facility design, and practices and procedures to prevent occupational infections in the workplace or release of the organisms to the environment.