La Jornada: US confirms first case of screwworm in Texas since 1966

The New World screwworm fly has arrived in southern Texas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed Wednesday, the first time in decades that the parasite has threatened the country’s livestock industry, and the third time it has appeared on U.S. soil in that span.

The Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, indicated that the case was detected in a three-week-old calf in LaPryor, Texas, about 80 kilometers from the border with Mexico.

Bud Dinges, Texas state veterinarian, said he has defined a 20-kilometer quarantine zone, in which the transport of any warm-blooded animal – including pets – is prohibited without inspection.

Rollins said there have been no other detections of the fly in the United States, and officials were quick to point out that while its larvae pose a threat to livestock production, they do not infest food. If proper medical care is given, even the infested calf should recover, he said.

Rollins, federal and Texas agricultural officials, as well as livestock industry leaders, have issued public warnings about the fly’s advance through Mexico for more than a year, prompted by the memory that it caused tens of millions of dollars in losses before its eradication in the 1970s.

It is the first confirmed case in Texas since 1966, Rollins noted.

Months of efforts to keep the fly out of the United States have included releasing millions of sterile screwworm individuals into the area to mate with wild females, the same method that was used successfully before the fly was eradicated.

They rule out massive infestation

Rollins noted that the USDA is confident enough in its preparedness measures to believe “there is no threat of mass infestation.”

The announcement of the suspected case comes a day after Rollins held a press conference to highlight the proximity of the threat, as cases had been confirmed in Mexico just 40 kilometers from the border, and to detail the work of the USDA to combat it.

Faced with the presence of screwworm in Mexico, the USDA allocated $21 million to convert a fruit fly breeding facility in southern Mexico into one to raise screwworm flies, opened a new center in South Texas to disperse sterile flies raised elsewhere, and began construction of a $750 million factory there to produce screwworm flies. The breeding facility in Mexico should be operating next month, Rollins noted.

Authorities also deployed 8,000 traps along the border between the United States and Mexico. Last year, the US Department of Agriculture closed the border to livestock imports from the Latin American country.