U.S.’s screwworm fix is still a year away, risking more spread

The US’s best weapon against a deadly cattle parasite threatening the beef industry is more than a year away from showing meaningful results, raising concerns over how far the outbreak could spread before then. When the New World screwworm reached the US earlier this month after advancing across Mexico for more than a year, federal officials were prepared to quarantine animals and distribute treatments. But the country’s key tool for suppressing the pest — a facility that breeds sterile flies to halt reproduction of the parasite — isn’t slated to begin operating until November 2027. The screwworm is actually a fly whose larvae infest the wounds of warm-blooded animals. So far, it has been detected in six cattle in Texas, the country’s top producer. That’s raising alarms at a difficult time for the cattle industry, as drought and high production costs have culled the nation’s herd to a 75-year low. The cases are the first in US livestock since an outbreak five decades ago, also in Texas. That was eradicated a decade later only with the help of sterile flies, as the US and Mexico scaled up production to as many as 500 million insects a week. For now, the US, has only a fraction of the sterile flies needed to mount an effective response. A facility in Panama is currently the only operational sterile fly production site in North America, making and dispersing 100 million insects a week, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Another plant in Metapa, Mexico, could as much as double overall output when it comes online as early as this summer. But the biggest hopes are centered on a larger production facility under construction at Moore Air Base in Texas. That won’t reach its initial goal of 100 million flies a week until November 2027. Ramping up to full capacity of 300 million flies will take even longer. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on the sidelines of a Senate hearing Wednesday that the US is “not going to be able to eradicate it until we’ve got th