US to breed sterile flies in Texas factory to protect cattle from maggots

The United States plans to breed thousands of sterile flies in a southern Texas factory in an effort to protect American cattle from flesh-eating maggots in Mexico.

The New World screwworm is a “devastating pest,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a news release this week. 

“When NWS fly larvae (maggots) burrow into the flesh of a living animal, they cause serious, often deadly damage to the animal. NWS can infest livestock, pets, wildlife, occasionally birds and, in rare cases, people. It is not only a threat to our ranching community, but it is a threat to our food supply and our national security.”

Factory construction is expected to cost $750 million, and it would be located at Moore Air Force Base outside Edinburg, Texas, about 20 miles north of the border. 

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The USDA says sterile flies are “currently the most effective way to prevent the spread of” the maggots, adding it hopes to produce and release them into the wild within a year.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said the government also plans to spend $100 million on technology such as traps and lures, therapeutics, border patrols by “tick riders” mounted on horseback, dogs trained to sniff out the parasite and other tools that could “bolster preparedness or response to NWS.”

Rollins added that the border will remain closed to cattle, horse and bison imports from Mexico until the parasite appears to be pushed back closer to Panama, where it had been contained until late last year through the breeding of sterile flies there. 

“Farm security is national security,” Rollins said at a news conference at the Texas State Capitol in Austin with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott this week. “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.”

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The parasite has hit Mexican cattle industry hard, and Mexico’s agriculture ministry said it plans to take steps to mitigate the problem. 

The New World screwworm was a problem in the American cattle industry until it was largely eradicated in the 1970s through the breeding of sterile flies, and factories were shut down afterward.