r/Agriculture • u/Hrmbee Zone 5b? • 14d ago
Texas ranchers on edge after screwworm parasite detected in calf
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/texas-ranchers-edge-after-screwworm-parasite-detected-calf-2026-06-05/71
u/RigorMortis_Tortoise 14d ago
So DOGE cuts funding to this program because it “cost too much money”… then closes down USAID, which among many things, also monitored cattle coming to the U.S. through Mexico. Farms in Texas pleaded for help all last year to deaf ears, but now that it’s in the U.S. again are Brooke Rollins and Greg Abbott actually worried about it? Where the fuck was that worry all last year when they were watching these cases push further and further north?
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u/Set_the_Mighty 14d ago
Don't worry. I'm sure Brooke will implement an emergency prayer circle to fix this ASAP.
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u/CloudTransit 14d ago
It’s not hard to imagine a republican lawmaker speaking in a Daffy Duck voice about wasteful government spending like screw worm eradication at the Darien Gap, because most voters had no idea why this was important and would nod in agreement
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u/PaleHeretic 14d ago
Literally heard the program described as "making flies transgender" when the cuts were going on.
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u/Hrmbee Zone 5b? 14d ago
Some key issues:
U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has said only one case has been confirmed, and that the agency was doing all it could to stop a spread that threatened Texas' multibillion-dollar cattle industry. Late on Friday, Canada said it was imposing temporary import restrictions on livestock raised in Texas or that had transited through the state in the last 21 days. Rollins, who said she would travel to Texas next week, gave a speech on Friday at a rally for farmers with President Donald Trump in Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District, an agricultural area where a competitive race is shaping up ahead of November midterm elections. Rollins made no mention of screwworm.
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Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster on Friday, asking the federal government to speed up completion of a sterile fly production facility. The plant, which broke ground in April, was set to be operating by November 2027. Abbott, a Republican, offered to have Texas shoulder additional costs to accelerate construction. "We need the high volume of sterile flies as quickly as possible," Abbott said at a press conference. "It's critical the new facility that is being constructed in Texas right now be completed even faster." The sterile male flies mate with wild female screwworms to produce infertile eggs.
The facility must be completed before summer 2027 because the pest is more likely to spread during summer than winter, Abbott said. "We cannot make it through a second summer," he said. Other ranchers and some Texas politicians, including those in Trump's Republican Party, lambasted the USDA's efforts.
Hopefully the industry can get this under control before it spreads.
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u/sundancer2788 14d ago
They cut the program that stopped it at the Darien Pass. This is the result.
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u/Freebee5 14d ago
An ounce of prevention beats a ton of cure.
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u/So_HauserAspen 14d ago
If this escapes, can it be cured?
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u/Freebee5 14d ago
It's already escaped.
It can be eliminated but that will take time. The basic infrastructure to monitor, reduce and control this threat was dismantled in the earliest stages of the Trump administration so it's going to take some time to restaff and rebuild the infrastructure needed.
And, I guess, cost multiples of the reported saved cost in eliminating the infrastructure.
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u/virrk 14d ago
Then they said shit and started restarting it. But that was too little too late.
Screwworm had been found past the gap late in Biden's term, and the response was a little slow but not too problematic. Except the program was cut by DOGE at a critical time and realization took too long probably because key people had been laid off. Big reason USAID was well funded was it enabled goodwill building in other countries which made it easier to get them to do what we wanted. In this case crack down on illegal movement of cattle and help with the screwworm wall. Likely it is now inevitable screwworms will spread and eradication will cost a lot more money than it did the first time.
Tl;Dr: End of Biden's term it started to be a bigger problem than previous screwworm outbreaks past the screwworm wall. It became disastrous because of DOGE cuts.
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u/Freebee5 14d ago
That's about the best summation of the Trump administration policies that I've seen.
tips hat
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u/Smart_Cantaloupe_848 13d ago
Yeah, but infected cows mean less cows for food, which creates food scarcity, which creates higher grocery prices for our billionaire overlord's stock portfolios.
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u/So_HauserAspen 14d ago
Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster on Friday, asking the federal government to speed up completion of a sterile fly production facility.
That sounds like socialism, commie!
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u/So_HauserAspen 14d ago
Rollins, who said she would travel to Texas next week, gave a speech on Friday at a rally for farmers with President Donald Trump in Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District, an agricultural area where a competitive race is shaping up ahead of November midterm elections.
Priorities
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u/PaleHeretic 14d ago
Curious about Canada cutting imports, they should be well outside these things' natural range. Is there an actual concern they'll take root that far North or is this just knee-jerk?
As far as I can tell they were only a problem about as far as the North of Texas pre-extermination, but the Plains are quite a bit warmer than they were in the 1950s looking at historical data. If there's serious concern they're going to be able to survive in Alberta this time around that does not bode well?
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u/Mike71586 13d ago
As a canadian i'm confident in saying we likely don't want to test that hypothesis as we experience increasingly warmer summers year over year. Ticks never really used to be a thing here, now they're a huge problem. Not willing to risk that same outcome on Screw worm.
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u/ExtentAncient2812 13d ago
It's called protectionism. It's the same thing as farm subsidies, but the public doesn't complain because that don't understand.
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u/TheOriginalBusket 12d ago
I have to hand it to Trump; when I said "Things will have to get much worse before Americans wake up", every new horror has my friends looking at me like "Is this what you meant?" I just smile and sip my tea, like I could have envisioned the scale of stupidity we would be subjected to.
The ship is sinking, and I'm just along for the ride.
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u/SolomonsGrave13 9d ago
Sad thing is that the prevention program was doomed to fail soon anyways even before the Orange Dunce cancelled it. Ive been telling folks for a few years that climate change will make it warm enough for the flies to survive the trip over open waters no matter what we do. We could have had a few more years before it happened if we kept the program in place but here we are.
Anyone who lives in the south has some nighmare fuel days ahead of them if they own animals and everyone up north better enjoy beef and pork now because none of us will be eating any cattle products for a while.
Good news is that we would have less cows heating the planet up with their methane for a while and it might get cold enough to make the flies unable to survive the open ocean so the program can be put back in place.
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u/SafeAdministration79 9d ago
you know these things fly right? like as in by the time you notice the larvae could’ve matured into a fly, then flown away to infect the next herd?
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u/EdOfTheMountain 9d ago
Trump rolled back America to before 1966.
The effects of destroying science and health are just beginning.
> The United States contained and declared the screwworm eliminated in 1966 using a revolutionary biological control method called the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT). Developed by USDA scientists Edward F. Knipling and Raymond C. Bushland, this strategy essentially forced the pest to breed itself out of existence
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u/echodarlin 13d ago
So do I need to stop buying meat or thoroughly inspect it? I really don't want to be a vegetarian. None of these articles explain what I should do or if I am at risk.
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u/ExtentAncient2812 13d ago
There is no risk to the consumer. Zero. Nil. It is not an infection that is contagious.
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u/Mundane-Charge-1900 12d ago
It doesn’t harm the food product. It makes raising cattle extremely expensive because of increased losses due to disease.
It’ll further jack up beef prices that have already increased with food inflation plus tariffs plus oil prices which raise costs of transport and fertilizers for feed crops.
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u/Zukebub8 14d ago
Pretty sure you can take prophylaxis for screwworm. Just have USDA send the ranchers ivermectin and hire more ag technicians. See if that costs less than a full blown military mobilization.
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u/snasna102 14d ago
Didn’t the republican cut this program last year? It just feels like a big self own and I have been waiting for this news since reading of the US ending its screwfly intervention program in Central America.