Hydrodynamic cavitation has become an alternative technology to perform a number of unit operations, such as reduction of particle size, dissolution, disinfection, and microbial inactivation. Such versatility of hydrodynamic cavitation has expanded over the past few years, where different designs and arrangements have been used to generate cavities. Recently, innovation in the design of the hydrodynamic cavitation devices has offered promising applications in the food and dairy industry, where the released energy during cavitation is put to work for disinfection, and microbial inactivation. This chapter aims at providing an overview of the operating principles of hydrodynamic cavitation, a review of the design of different devices, and a summary of recent advances of hydrodynamic cavitation for microbial inactivation.