The Foreign Service Journal, April 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2022 29 Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins, second from right in the front row, at the FAO Crisis Management Centre Steering Committee meeting in 2016. APHIS worked with FAO to establish the center in 2006; it is now the Emergency Management Centre–Animal Health. The Global Health Security Agenda Presidential Initiative highlighted the importance of APHIS’ role in preventing zoonotic diseases and raised the profile of APHIS’ work. COURTESYOFKARENSLITER to adhere to OIE standards in an effort to ensure safe trade, and thus maintain export markets. The effect on trade, however, was significant. Nearly all export markets for U.S. beef were shut down as a result of largely unjustified measures taken by many countries; and at the tenth anniversary of the first U.S. BSE case, the U.S. Meat Export Federation estimated the cumulative loss in beef trade to be $16 billion. APHIS FSOs would work for nearly another decade to remove all BSE-related restrictions on U.S. exports. In addition to trade concerns, concerns about the grow- ing threat posed by zoonotic diseases (illnesses that can be transmitted from animals to humans) continued to increase. When an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus occurred in China, Thailand and Vietnam, APHIS directly addressed the virus at its source—in poultry abroad—to reduce the chances of a U.S. outbreak. For example, APHIS FSOs provided training at the APHIS National Veterinary Services Laboratory for 99 foreign officials from 62 countries to conduct