19 Jun 2026
The USDA issued a rallying cry after screwworm case confirmed in Texas, but critics have accused the Trump administration of leaving the country unprepared for an outbreak.
Chris Simpson
Job Title
Image: Photo Agency / Adobe Stock
The US Department of Agriculture’s response (USDA) to the growing threat of New World screwworm (NWS) has been slammed after a case was detected in Texas.
The flesh-eating parasite has been moving north through Central America and Mexico since last year, and the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has now confirmed a case in a calf in Zavala County, Texas.
USDA under-secretary for marketing and regulatory programs Dudley Hoskins said: “Protecting our livestock industry is a national security issue of the utmost importance, and USDA is wasting no time in taking action.
“USDA invested heavily in the tools needed to eliminate NWS ever since cases started increasing in Central America and Mexico. The United States has defeated this pest before, and we will do it again.”
The USDA said it has formed a unified “Incident Command Team” with the Texas Animal Health Commission and deployed response personnel to the area, established a 20km infested zone around the detection and implemented quarantines, movement controls and surveillance.
It also said it is expediting its targeted release of sterile NWS flies by immediately deploying ground release chambers in the area, in addition to the four million sterile flies per week already being released aerially.
Earlier this year, the department launched a US$100 million funding initiative to combat NWS.
A sterile fly dispersal facility was completed in Edinburg, Texas, in February, while ground broke on a neighbouring production facility – which will have a targeted maximum capacity of 300 million sterile flies per week – in April.
However, Texas agriculture commissioner Sid Miller – a Republican – accused the USDA of “a slow, bureaucratic, and incomplete response that allowed the pest to advance unchecked through Mexico and reach American soil”.
He said that “instead of using every available tool, USDA moved too slowly and relied solely on a partial solution that takes years to fully implement” and urged US president Donald Trump to “throw every available federal resource at this threat before it becomes a full-blown agricultural disaster”.
Among the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts made shortly after he returned to office in January last year were programmes dedicated to monitoring and containing NWS in Central America.
Following the case detection, the Texas Democratic Party wrote on social media: “The Trump administration’s cuts to federal agencies have left us dangerously unprepared for a New World screwworm infestation.”