This edition of the FAL Bulletin analyses the requirements of and the advantages offered by the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) of the United States and the Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) programme implemented by the European Union.Supply chain security, especially for foodstuffs, has grown considerably in importance in recent years, owing to a combination of different factors which are emerging or becoming more significant, making the requirement of ensuring that a cargo is harmless increasingly essential and valuable during trade negotiations.In the field of certifying the harmlessness of a cargo, a number of private-sector standards have arisen worldwide, but the benefits offered by the C-TPAT and AEO programmes are well above those of their private-sector counterparts.As a first step, a comparative analysis of the programmes implemented by the two largest markets in the northern hemisphere is needed in order to provide to Latin American and Caribbean exporters the information they need in order to modify or tailor their installations and production procedures, to achieve greater market entry.