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A 3-week-old calf in La Pryor tested positive. Officials imposed a 12-mile quarantine and released four million sterile flies the same day.
nypost.comU.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed a case of New World screwworm in a 3-week-old calf in La Pryor, Texas, on Wednesday. La Pryor lies roughly 50 miles from the Mexican border. The last confirmed case in Texas occurred in 1966.
Texas State Veterinarian Bud Dinges imposed a 12-mile quarantine zone covering much of Zavala County and part of neighboring Uvalde County. The order prohibits movement of any warm-blooded animal without inspection. On the same day, the USDA deployed a unified incident command team with the Texas Animal Health Commission and established a 20-kilometer control area with additional movement restrictions.
Four million sterile flies were released on Wednesday. A new dispersal center opened in South Texas in February. The USDA allocated $21 million to convert a facility in southern Mexico into a fly-breeding operation and $750 million for a new fly factory in south Texas, expected to begin operations next month and reach full capacity by fall 2026.
Livestock ports on the border have been closed since May 2025. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the ports will remain closed until further notice. Beagles trained to detect the flies have been deployed at border crossings, and thousands of surveillance traps are in place.
Cases in Mexico have been found heavily in cats and dogs crossing into the United States. The New World screwworm fly larvae eat live flesh and burrow into open wounds on livestock, wildlife, pets, and occasionally humans. A female mates only once in her monthslong life.
The USDA eradicated the pest in the United States in the 1960s using the Sterile Insect Technique, in which sterile males are bred by the millions and released from aircraft. The pest remained contained in Panama until late 2024, after which it moved north through Central America and Mexico.
Derrell Peel, an agricultural economist at Oklahoma State University, said limited output at the Panama facility and increased illegal cattle movement allowed the fly to bypass sterile-fly release zones.
Mexico’s shift over the past 15 to 20 years from a regional to a national cattle market further aided rapid spread, he said. Lee Haines, an associate research professor at the University of Notre Dame, said milder winters have reduced natural suppression of stray populations.
APHIS lost roughly a quarter of its workforce in early 2025, and international disease-prevention funding was cut in March 2025.
The beef cow herd stands at 2 million head, its lowest level since 1951. More than 79 percent of the beef cow herd in the 26 largest cattle-producing states is affected by drought. Beef production has fallen for several consecutive years.
Farm bankruptcies filed under Chapter 12 rose 46 percent compared with 2024. A February 2026 executive order expanded the tariff-rate quota for lean beef trimmings from Argentina by 80,000 metric tons. Cash cattle prices fell nearly 13 percent in the weeks after the announcement before recovering.
American soybean exports to China have dropped to near zero amid tariff disputes. Urea prices jumped more than 40 percent after the United States entered the Iran war in February 2026. Cattle producers in the affected region have called on President Donald Trump to declare a national emergency.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said the screwworm has advanced over 1,100 miles from southern Mexico to Texas and urged immediate deployment of the Screwworm Adult Suppression System alongside sterile-fly releases. Brooke Rollins said the pest poses no food safety risk. “This pest does not cause a food safety issue.
This is not a disease, it is not a virus,” she said. Animals treated early enough can make a full recovery, she added. Jennifer Koziol, an associate professor at Texas Tech University School of Veterinary Medicine, said wound care is critically important and called on the Centers for Disease Control to confirm all human cases.
Phillip Kaufman, a professor of entomology at Texas A&M University, said producing sufficient numbers of sterile flies and releasing them in the correct places at the right time remains critical. Colin Woodall, CEO of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said the industry already faced the smallest domestic herd since the 1940s.
“Drought, rising input costs and a lack of agricultural labor are all compounded by the arrival of New World Screwworm,” he said.
The FDA has expanded treatment options by granting veterinarians access to commercially available products.
The Ministry of Health reported 1,003 cases and 254 deaths as of the latest count, with 100 recoveries. The Bundibugyo virus outbreak, declared May 15 in Ituri province, has spread to neighboring provinces and Uganda.
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