Fighting hunger is not only about producing more food. It also means protecting livestock from diseases and preventing them from spreading across borders.

That's why in 1994 FAO established the Emergency Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases, or EMPRES.

FAO’s EMPRES-Livestock programme continues to play a major role in the fight against persisting and/or spreading transboundary animal diseases at a global level, with emphasis however on developing countries. Salient under EMPRES is the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme (GREP) which has advanced to a stage that large tracts of Asia and Africa have now been free from Rinderpest (RP) for an extended period of time. In fact, RP in Asia has been extinguished; but this needs to be verified, a process EMPRES is currently heavily engaged in with the countries concerned. The Somali Ecosystem seems to be the last host of rinderpest virus in the world. The target of RP elimination globally is still maintained for the year 2010, but the danger of complacency is recognized and keeping the GREP mission on the forefront of the FAO agenda is essential.

In addition to Rinderpest, EMPRES runs normative and operational activities on the containment and progressive control of various other serious transboundary diseases.