US To Open Fly Production Facility For Combating Mexican New World Screwworms

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins launched a facility in South Texas on Wednesday that will release millions of sterile flies to fight the threat of flesh-eating parasites that are infecting cattle in Mexico and could reach the U.S. border soon, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in a June 18 statement.

Livestock in pens at the Chihuahua Regional Livestock Union facility, outside Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, wait to be exported to the United States on Feb 10, 2025,. Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

The parasite, New World screwworm (NWS), is a “devastating pest that causes serious and often deadly damage to livestock, wildlife, pets, and in rare cases, humans,” the USDA said. Some U.S. agriculture and cattle industry officials are worried that if the migration isn’t checked, the NWS flies could reach the border by the end of summer.

According to the agency, NWS females lay eggs on wounds or orifices of warm-blooded animals. Once the eggs hatch into larvae, they burrow into the wound and feed off the flesh. As more maggots hatch and feed, the wound becomes deeper and larger. Eventually, it becomes so severe that the host animal dies.

A single female NWS fly can lay up to 3,000 eggs over its lifespan. As such, a large infestation poses considerable risks to farmers raising cows, sheep, and other animals.

In the 1950s, a strategy called sterile insect technique (SIT) was developed, which was used to eradicate NWS from the United States, Mexico, and Central America, the USDA said in an April 2025 document. SIT used gamma radiation to turn NWS pupae into sterile male flies.

When the male flies are released en masse, they mate with wild female flies who end up laying unfertilized eggs, eventually leading to the eradication of these pests.

“While NWS has been eradicated from the United States for decades, recent detections in Mexico as far north as Oaxaca and Veracruz, about 700 miles away from the U.S. border, led to the immediate suspension of live cattle, horse, and bison imports through U.S. ports of entry along the southern border on May 11, 2025,” said the USDA statement.

The facility launched by the agriculture secretary is an $8.5 million sterile NWS fly dispersal site located at Moore Air Base in South Texas.

The United States currently can procure 100 million flies per week from a sterile fly production facility in Panama. The USDA has invested $21 million in a production facility in Mexico that, when operational, will provide another 60-100 million flies weekly. Combined, at least 160 million flies per week are expected to be available for disbursal through the Moore Air Base facility.

In addition, the USDA is also looking at installing a sterile fly production facility at Moore Air Base to complement the new dispersal facility.

“The United States has defeated NWS before, and we will do it again,” said Rollins. “We do not take lightly the threat NWS poses to our livestock industry, our economy, and our food supply chain.

“The United States government will use all resources at its disposal to push back NWS, and today’s announcement of a domestic strategy to bolster our border defenses is just the beginning. We have the proven tools, strong domestic and international partnerships, and the grit needed to win this battle.”

(or screwworms)

Countering NWS Infestation

In a June 18 statement, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) announced “strong support” for USDA’s plan to construct an NWS sterile fly production facility at Moore Air Base.

“To form an effective barrier along the U.S. southern border, we need upwards of 300 million sterile flies per week. During the height of screwworm eradication efforts in the 1960s, the United States released 400 to 500 million sterile flies per week,” it said.

Moon Air Base is an ideal location for the production of sterile flies since its proximity to the border “make it easy for sterile flies to quickly be deployed to the areas of the U.S. most at risk.”

In a June 19 post on social media platform X, Mexico’s agriculture secretary, Julio Berdegue, said the actions taken by the United States to strengthen the fight against NWS are a “positive step that, in several ways, will strengthen joint Mexico-U.S. efforts.”

He expressed hope that Mexico can “resume the export of our cattle as soon as possible.”

The economic fallout of not countering the spread of NWS infections can be massive.

According to a January 2025 USDA document, a 1976 outbreak of NWS resulted in 1,488,256 cattle and 332,600 sheep and goats getting infested with these pests in Texas alone.

If a similar scale outbreak were to occur in Texas at present, producers in the state could lose $732 million a year, with the Texas economy suffering a loss of $1.8 billion.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.