A flesh-eating parasite that can kill animals and infect humans has been detected in the US for the first time since 1966, with a case confirmed in a three-week-old calf in Texas.
The US Department of Agriculture has outlined a plan to combat the outbreak, which includes deploying hundreds of millions of genetically altered sterile flies and using sniffer dogs to detect the insects. The sterile flies will be released in a 20km-wide “control zone” around the site of the first US infection in La Pryor, Texas, near the Mexico border.
Screwworm Outbreak
Screwworms are parasitic flies that lay eggs in open wounds and mucous membranes of living warm-blooded animals and people, with the larvae burrowing through living flesh and eventually killing their host if left untreated. The threat to humans is low, but cattle ranchers fear an outbreak could have a large impact on beef markets.
US officials have released four million sterile flies by ground and another four million by plane on a weekly basis since February, but critics say it’s not enough to immediately impact and halt the growing screwworm population. The current supply of sterile flies is too low, with facilities in the US and Mexico capable of producing only about 100 million sterile flies per week, while officials say they need to breed up to 600 million sterile screwworms flies each week.
The Sterile Insect Technique, which involves releasing hundreds of millions of sterile screwworm flies, has been used for many years to control insect populations, including fruit flies and mosquitos. However, the use of this method to combat the screwworm outbreak has been criticized by some as insufficient.
Response and Implications
Democrats have criticized the response to the outbreak as slow and delayed, pointing to the elimination of the US Agency for International Development’s program to track screwworms in Central America. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller denounced the federal government’s response as “a slow, bureaucratic, and incomplete response that allowed the pest to advance unchecked through Mexico and reach American soil”.
The outbreak has significant implications for the US cattle industry, with the potential to impact beef markets and the livelihoods of cattle ranchers. The US Department of Agriculture and other officials are working to contain the outbreak and prevent its spread, but the challenge is significant, and the outcome is uncertain.
