USDA Builds $750 Million Screwworm Defense as Fly Reaches 25 Miles From Texas Border
Updated
Updated · USA TODAY · Jun 2
USDA Builds $750 Million Screwworm Defense as Fly Reaches 25 Miles From Texas Border
3 articles · Updated · USA TODAY · Jun 2
Summary
A New World screwworm case in Coahuila, Mexico — 25 miles from Texas — has pushed USDA and Texas to intensify a response aimed at keeping the parasite out of the United States.
The plan includes closed U.S.-Mexico livestock ports, a new $750 million sterile-fly facility at Moore Air Base in South Texas, and a $21 million conversion of a site in Metapa, Mexico.
Brooke Rollins said the South Texas plant will produce up to 300 million sterile flies a week to suppress reproduction and drive the pest back south; she also said no U.S. cases have been reported.
Texas officials said more than 58,000 suspicious flies have been submitted for identification with no New World screwworm found, even as the state expands trapping, releases and outreach in South Texas.
The parasite, eradicated from the U.S. in the 1960s, attacks living tissue in livestock, pets, wildlife and sometimes people, leaving Texas to prepare for a threat to its livestock industry even as current U.S. risk remains low.