First U.S. screwworm case confirmed in South Texas(texastribune.org) |
First U.S. screwworm case confirmed in South Texas(texastribune.org) |
https://asm.org/articles/2025/september/new-word-screwworm-r...
There's currently only one plant in Panama running the sterile fly program, but both Mexico and the US are opening new plants to handle the issue.
"The U.S. Department of Agriculture is constructing a new $750 million facility nearby to breed sterile flies, though U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said it won’t be completed until late 2027. In the meantime, the agency is investing $21 million to transform a fruit fly breeding center in far southern Mexico into a screwworm fly production site, with operations set to begin this summer."
https://www.statesman.com/news/article/texas-possible-new-wo...
They should have checked every fly for their immigration status!
(And if it got screwed up, I'd say it's much more likely to have been an accidental result of misguided austerity measures like DOGE.)
> The Department of Government Efficiency cut approximately 15,000 USDA jobs and terminated thousands of USAID programs, including a screwworm monitoring project.