The U.S. is investing hundreds of millions of dollars to build a factory in southern Texas that will be used to breed billions of sterile flies to combat a flesh-eating parasite threatening the American cattle industry.
Secretary Brooke Rollins said the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) aims to produce and release sterile male New World screwworm flies into the wild within a year. The new facility will be located on Moore Air Base outside Edinburg, Texas, roughly 20 miles from the border with Mexico.
Rollins noted that the USDA plans to deploy $100 million in technology, increase border patrols by horseback-mounted “tick riders,” and train dogs to detect the flesh-eating maggots threatening to inundate U.S. cattle.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, the parasite’s larvae are known to burrow into the wounds of living mammals, including livestock. One burrowed, they can cause extensive damage or even death.
Until the U.S. determines eradication efforts are pushing the pest back south toward Panama, Rollins said the U.S. border will remain shut to cattle, horse, and bison imports from Mexico. In the past eight months, the border has been closed three times to those imports, the last time in July after reports of an infestation roughly 370 miles from the Texas border.
American officials say the fly could wreak havoc if it makes its way into Texas, potentially causing billions of dollars in economic losses. It could also drive beef prices even higher.
“Farm security is national security. All Americans should be concerned. But it’s certainly Texas and our border and livestock producing states that are on the front lines of this every day,” Rollins said during a news conference at the Texas State Capitol in Austin alongside Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, per ABC News.
Screwworms were once a problem for the American cattle industry for decades, but the issue was contained after the pest was mostly eradicated in the 1970s. The tactic of breeding and releasing sterile male flies to breed with wild females was also used at the time, but fly factories were eventually shut down after the issue was contained.
