USDA to build fly facility to fight cattle-killing screwworm
$750M plan aims to protect herd, curb soaring beef prices
18 August 2025
2 minute read
By: The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) will spend up to $750 million to build a facility in Texas that produces sterile flies to fight the flesh-eating livestock pest New World screwworm, Reuters reported, citing Secretary Brooke Rollins as its source on Friday.
The plan signals increasing worries about the risk of screwworm, a parasitic fly that eats livestock and wildlife alive, to infest US cattle after the pest moved north in Mexico toward the US border.
An outbreak could further elevate record-high US beef prices by reducing the US cattle supply.
"It could truly crush the cattle industry," Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at a news conference with Rollins.
In Texas, the largest cattle-producing state, ranchers are anticipating the return of screwworm for the first time in decades. The United States eliminated screwworm in the 20th century by flying planes over hotspots to drop boxes packed with sterile flies.
The production plant in Edinburg, Texas, would be located with a previously announced sterile fly dispersal facility at Moore Air Base and be able to produce 300 million sterile screwworm flies per week, Rollins said. Sterile flies reduce the mating population of the wild flies.
Rollins did not say when the plant would open but previously said such a facility would take two to three years to build.
The USDA will spend another $100 million on technologies to combat screwworm while the facility is being constructed and hire more mounted officers to patrol the border for infested wildlife, Rollins said.
The agency halted imports of Mexican cattle in July to keep out screwworm, tightening US cattle supplies already at their lowest levels in decades.
"Those ports don't open until we begin to push the screwworm back," Rollins said.
The USDA has also invested in a sterile fly production plant in Mexico that is slated to open next year.
In Panama, a facility breeds up to 100 million sterile flies per week. The USDA estimated 500 million flies must be released weekly to push screwworm back south in Latin America.
"All Americans should be concerned," Rollins said.
