The New World Screwworm is closer to the U.S. border with Mexico. Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins said Mexico reported several new cases last week.
“Just recently, Mexico reported eight new detections of New World Screwworm late last week. These should all be on the screwworm.gov website, so I don’t think this is new news. One of those that was detected was a five-year-old goat, approximately 25 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, so this is the closest we’ve seen it. I know we’ve had one last fall, about 60 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, and we surged information at that point. We’re able to push it back a little bit.”
She said the decision to close the border to Mexican livestock imports into the U.S. definitely kept the Screwworm from crossing the border.
“If left unchecked, according to every model, New World Screwworm would have arrived in the U.S. by last summer. In other words, if we had not closed the port, so that decision I stand by. I know there’s been a lot of pressure and a lot of questioning about whether those ports should have been closed, but we closed those so that we could stop the spread, hopefully keep the New World Screwworm out of Mexico while we are working to push it back once again.”
If the New World Screwworm does cross the border into the U.S., Rollins said there’s already a plan in place for dealing with the problem/
“Our updated New World Screwworm Response Playbook includes, and by the way, that’s at our website, screwworm.gov, detailed protocols and procedures for precisely the situation that we may face, and that is if our southern border of America is breached. We are preparing to implement the very moment the fly makes it into our country. If we have a domestic detection, USDA and relevant state animal health officials will immediately put in place quarantines and movement restrictions to limit the pest spread.”