In most of Southern Africa the vast majority of cattle are located in areas not free of foot and mouth disease (FMD), leaving owners of these cattle with limited access to regional and international beef markets. This situation constrains investment in cattle production, thereby limiting rural development and helping to entrench rural poverty. For decades, this situation has simply been accepted because the types of FMD viruses prevalent in the region are maintained by wildlife and are therefore essentially impossible to eliminate. Moreover, until recently, international trade rules and conventions were founded on the need for the locality of beef production to be free of FMD. Fortunately, this situation is changing and options include, among others, management of risk of FMD along individual value chains to enable assurance that the final products are free of FMD virus and therefore can be traded with negligible risk of transmission of infection, irrespective of the FMD status of the locality of production (i.e. commodity-based trade (CBT)....