{"id":1393,"date":"2026-06-14T11:08:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T11:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1393"},"modified":"2026-06-14T11:08:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T11:08:14","slug":"u-s-s-screwworm-fix-is-still-a-year-away-risking-more-spread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1393","title":{"rendered":"U.S.\u2019s screwworm fix is still a year away, risking more spread"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When the New World screwworm reached the US earlier this month after advancing across Mexico for more than a year, federal officials were prepared to quarantine animals and distribute treatments. But the country\u2019s key tool for suppressing the pest \u2014 a facility that breeds sterile flies to halt reproduction of the parasite \u2014 isn\u2019t slated to begin operating until November 2027.<\/p>\n

Read more The Gen Z cofounder of $1.6 billion Whop says his platform has minted over 650 millionaires\u2014he wants to make work fun and money worries obsolete<\/a><\/p>\n

The screwworm is actually a fly whose larvae infest the wounds of warm-blooded animals. So far, it has been detected in six cattle in Texas, the country\u2019s top producer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s raising alarms at a difficult time for the cattle industry, as drought and high production costs have culled the nation\u2019s herd to a 75-year low. The cases are the first in US livestock since an outbreak five decades ago, also in Texas. That was\u00a0\u00a0a decade later only with the help of sterile flies, as the US and Mexico scaled up production to as many as\u00a0500 million insects a week.<\/p>\n

For now, the US, has only a fraction of the sterile flies needed to mount an effective response.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A facility in Panama is currently the only operational sterile fly production site in North America, making and dispersing 100 million insects a week, according to the\u00a0US Department of Agriculture. Another plant in Metapa, Mexico, could as much as double overall output when it comes online as early as this summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the biggest hopes are centered on a larger production facility under construction at\u00a0Moore Air Base\u00a0in Texas. That won\u2019t reach its initial goal of 100 million flies a week until November 2027. Ramping up to full capacity of 300 million flies will take even longer.<\/p>\n

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Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on the sidelines of a Senate hearing Wednesday that the US is \u201cnot going to be able to eradicate it until we\u2019ve got the couple hundred million more flies coming in, but we will be able to contain it.\u201d She added that she doesn\u2019t \u201chave a good enough sense yet\u201d of how far screwworm might spread in the meantime.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to give it maybe a month and watch and see what happens,\u201d Rollins said.<\/p>\n

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Read More:\u00a0What Is Screwworm and Why Is It a Cause for Concern?: Explainer<\/p>\n

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The facilities\u00a0\u00a0screwworm pupae with radiation to produce sterile flies, and the males are then distributed to mate with wild female flies. The resulting eggs are unfertilized, and because the females typically\u00a0mate only once, the cycle prevents new screwworm flies from being born. Without intervention, a female fly could lay more than 3,000 eggs over a lifespan of two to four weeks, according to\u00a0Lee Haines, associate research professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame.<\/p>\n

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The USDA has already\u00a0opened\u00a0a new facility in Texas solely for dispersing flies, and\u00a0earlier this week\u00a0said it had developed a way to double production with a new male-only strain of sterile flies. Those preemptive investments are \u201cprobably already mitigating some of that risk,\u201d said Glynn Tonsor, a professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University.<\/p>\n

Yet the US will probably \u201cbe handicapped for a while in being able to disperse the number of sterile males that we need in order to truly combat this pest problem,\u201d said Arlan Suderman, the chief commodites economist at StoneX Group. \u201cWe really need that plant in southern Texas. That takes time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Livestock producers, in the meantime, will face an indirect cost burden that comes with monitoring and treating animals, he said. That threatens to send cattle prices even higher and discourage the rebuilding of the US cattle herd. The prolonged supply crunch has already left beef processors operating at losses and sent consumer beef prices soaring to records.<\/p>\n

Read more Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says \u2018new world order will be built starting with Europe\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Read More:\u00a0Record Beef Prices Spark Blame Game in Complex Cattle Economy<\/p>\n

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Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller has\u00a0criticized\u00a0the USDA\u2019s screwworm response, calling for the use of a targeted bait system that attracts and kills female flies before they can reproduce, in tandem with the release of sterile flies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Miller also likened the current output of 100 million flies a week to \u201csqueezing the middle of the balloon,\u201d saying that shifting the quantity of flies\u00a0toward Texas\u00a0from the Mexican border only leaves a different swath uncovered.<\/p>\n

USDA Under Secretary\u00a0Scott Hutchins\u00a0said earlier this month that while it is \u201cso important that we do have a lure-and-kill type of technology,\u201d the agency is not using the bait system that Miller suggested because it uses a \u201cvery indiscriminate attractant that brings in literally every fly within an area.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last outbreak in Texas\u00a0\u00a0nearly 1.5 million cattle and cost the state\u2019s economy $375 million, before sterile fly releases helped drive the screwworm out of the US and eventually down to Panama. The production facility there has been operating since then, largely holding the pest at bay until the latest outbreak in Mexico.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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US senators in a\u00a0Thursday letter\u00a0asked Rollins to accelerate the production of sterile flies, including by exploring the USDA\u2019s reach under the Defense Production Act. They called for additional hiring and a commitment that the agency\u2019s plans to relocate much of its workforce out of Washington won\u2019t disrupt the screwworm response.<\/p>\n

Read More:\u00a0Rollins Defends Screwworm Response as USDA Staff Cuts Draw Fire<\/p>\n

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The US is also trying to manage the screwworm\u2019s spread through quarantines and the distribution of medications. The US Food and Drug Administration had already issued conditional approval for several drugs, and Rollins has said some supplies from the USDA\u2019s National Veterinary Stockpile have been flown to Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Justin Welsh, Merck Animal Health\u2019s executive director of US livestock technical services, said the availability of the company\u2019s product is \u201cvery complete\u201d and that it has been replenishing inventories for its distributor partners \u201cliterally daily.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Still, applying treatments across entire herds \u201cgets really challenging from an expense approach,\u201d said\u00a0Derek Foster, an associate professor of ruminant medicine at North Carolina State University. The burden includes not only the cost of medications but also the labor needed to apply them, especially \u201cover what could ultimately be a really prolonged period of time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the USDA is preparing its strategy. In an X post on Friday, the agency presented it as a \u201cMain Event\u201d battle pitting the sterile flies against the screwworm: \u201cOne enters to reproduce. One enters to end the bloodline \u2026 One mission. One goal. Knockout New World screwworm!\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Middle-aged adults taking GLP-1s for obesity can save over $192K on lifetime medical costs, higher if they don\u2019t have college degrees, new study finds<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A facility that breeds sterile flies to halt reproduction of the parasite isn\u2019t slated to begin operating until November 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[258],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agriculture"],"yoast_head":"\nU.S.\u2019s screwworm fix is still a year away, risking more spread - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1393\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"U.S.\u2019s screwworm fix is still a year away, risking more spread - 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