Many livestock groups are monitoring for the New World Screwworm, which was first confirmed last week in a three-week-old calf in South Texas. Groups like the Kansas Dairy Association are among those monitoring the situation, but, as Dave Lane, President of the Kansas Dairy Association, says, he wasn’t shocked by the first U.S. case.
“There’s been so much activity on the other side of the border in May already, with a whole summer in front of us, so it’s not a real shock. I will say, at least compared to High Path (Avian Influenza), we’re way more prepared for it. People are already on the lookout, and people are clearly ready to move on it. I thought it was interesting that one of the things they mentioned in detection was navels on calves, and that is what hit on this calf. It wasn’t some cow with a big gaping wound with fly eggs in it, but it was a navel on a calf. So that should wake everyone up a little bit to those newborn calves.”
Dr. Justin Smith, Kansas Animal Health Commissioner for the state’s Department of Agriculture, says it’s not that uncommon to have cases around the navel area of cattle.
“I’m basing all this off the reports we’re getting out of Mexico that they’ve had. Many of the cases that they started reporting to us individually here in the last month, as they got closer to our border, were on a bit of a collision, and I’ve actually been told that if left unchecked, they felt like they probably 100 percent of those wet navels would get invested with this fly. So, it is not uncommon. In fact, they said it’s kind of a preferred area for some reason.”
Chelsea Good is the new Executive Director of Kansas Dairy.
“They were being vigilant. They were looking for signs, they saw something, and so they sent it into the lab for testing. Really, most of the models show New World Screwworm coming to the U.S. in the last summer or early fall, and so between industry and our state and federal animal health officials, I think we had some extra time to get prepared, and that’s a good thing. It’s something where there is a plan in place to be followed. I think it’s something that, as an industry, we’ll have to be vigilant about, as with all things animal health. But the important thing, I think, from a consumer standpoint, is just to know that our food supply is 100 percent safe. This is fully contained, and this is not a food supply issue. It’s an animal health issue.”
The three-week-old calf was located near La Pryor, Texas, nearly 100 miles southwest of San Antonio.