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Screwworm Parasite 'No Longer Contained in Texas' as Trump USDA Doubles Down on Efforts to Blame Biden
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026
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There have been many times where the gap has been breached in the 50+ years it's been in place — it's inevitable when dealing with a flying insect with such a short lifespan.
You're right to highlight that multiple decades is a heckton of time when it comes to the evolutionary lifecycle of this fly, but keeping track of these kinds of changes is part of the intensive preventative work done by programs under USDA.
DOGE explicitly slashed the USDA, including the screwworm program. Some funding was restored at a later date, but I believe a lot of that was put towards the construction of a new plant that would breed sterile flies (which needed to be released weekly) — a plant that is a long way from being completed. Previously, the bulk of the flies being released were produced at a plant in Panama, which no doubt spurred the decision to build a new one in the US.
However, even if the new plant had already been online before Trump ordered USDA to pull back from intergovernmental cooperation with other countries, this outbreak might not have been averted. Progress in keeping the screwworm at bay has only been possible through constant cooperation between countries. Especially because monitoring fly populations and cases of screwworm (on both sides of the barrier line) is probably the most significant facet of the program. Inspectors have to patrol thousands of square miles of land by motorcycle, boat and horseback, and the amount of manpower that takes is insane. The US was previously contributing a heckton of that manpower, but I can't imagine that monitoring has been anywhere close to how it used to be when the USDA has been bled dry of personnel
TL;DR: I was going to say that it was definitely the US who dropped the ball, but it would be more accurate to say that they threw it, with force, at the people who were most essential for keeping the screwworm at bay
Why would they have a plant in the US?/ THE reason they chose where they did is because it is small. I don't think they could control the entire US boarder orbit would be more expensive.
I can't say for certain why they'd want a plant in the US, but I do know that they are already midway through building one in Texas, which is scheduled to be completed in November 2027. If I had to guess, I would say that it's for much the same reason why Trump pushed through an executive order ordering USDA to pull back from programs that involved cooperating with other countries.
I don't know this for certain though — it's possible that the building of this plant was something that was approved during the Biden era, and that it was just intended to increase the amount of sterile flies available (the Panama plant was already working 24/7), or to make the system more resilient. However, I wouldn't be surprised if it was another facet of MAGA hostile foreign policy
Edit: apparently the plant began being built in April, so it seems it was indeed something that started recently.
Even if the facility had been already operative, it would've still been dumb as shit to pull back from cooperation with other countries, but the fact that this decision was made before there was a viable alternative boggles the mind. (To be clear, the pulling back from international cooperation didn't mean that the US would no longer be relying on the Panama plant at all — I imagine they still were. However, because the dropping of flies was reliant on so many faces of cooperation, it appears that there has been less active work to maintain the barrier, possibly because it would involve relying on Panama)