. . . If we don’t recognize the importance of both livestock and
wildlife, southern Africa is going to lose out. The following
excerpts are taken from the second part of a two-part interview
with Steve Osofsky, Director of Wildlife Health Policy for the
Wildlife Conservation Society. ‘In Botswana, if you want to
export beef right now you have to have this physical separation
of cattle and wildlife. But in order to produce beef that is
free of foot and mouth disease, there are other ways through
which it appears that that can be done safely. And this involves
what we call commodity based trade—which exists in other parts
of the world. And what we are really talking about is managing
the risk of foot and mouth disease in a different way. Instead
of necessarily requiring all of this separation of wildlife and
livestock—you process the beef, you debone it, you take out the
lymph nodes— which is usually done to produce high quality
steaks, anyway— and you age the beef (which changes the pH and
kills the foot and m