Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins announced Wednesday that USDA would be reestablishing a New World Screwworm sterile fly facility at Moore Air Base in South Texas to protect the US from the spread of the pest from Mexico. This facility was used in the 1960s to help eradicate a screw worm infestation that threatened the US livestock industry at that time. National Cattlemen’s Beef Association President Buck Wehrbein was at the announcement and told the Beltway Beef podcast…
“We’ve had issues with getting the flies distributed in southern Mexico. And so there’s been a change from, instead of bringing them from Panama, where they’re creating 100 million of them a week, to Moore Air Force Base, staging them there and then delivering them, and that will be a big help. It was a facility back in the ‘60s that helped create these things, and to where we overwhelmed it, and we can do that again.”
It’s estimated that upwards of 300 million sterile flies must be propagated per week to combat the screwworm. Wehrbein says USDA has formed a detailed plan to overwhelm the dangerous pest.
“Secretary Rollins also has committed 20 or 21 million to the Mexican government to assist them in getting a facility going down there that could produce 60 to 100 million flies a week. And so these things are all part of a longer she’s got a five-point plan with a lot of detail. It’s good to see that they’ve got something on paper that is well thought out.”
Wehrbein says Rollins and her team at USDA have put a lot of work into keeping the screwworm out of the US.
“We are grateful for her, for this action, for the action that she’s taken. We’re grateful that she is, in my view, listening, but more importantly than that, hearing us and she, as I said, she understands the urgency of this. And I mentioned that the longest journey begins with a single step. And you know, this is one of the early steps in this, what I’m afraid, is going to be a long journey.”