An old foe of U.S. livestock approaching from South America threatens the health of American cattle and the livelihood of cattle ranchers after it appeared in Mexico and triggered an emergency response from the U.S.
The New World screwworm appeared Nov. 22 in a single cow in Chiapas state, southern Mexico, near the country’s border with Guatemala. according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Mexico’s Chief Veterinary Officer duly informed the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the detection, prompting APHIS to ban the importation of all livestock from Mexico until Mexican authorities fully investigate the extent of the infestation.
The ban has now forced cattle worth millions of dollars to be stuck in their pens in Mexico, ranchers in Texas to panic about the potential threats to their livelihood and authorities in the state to warn of supply chain disruption and inflation of the price of beef, 25 News KXXV reported Monday. (RELATED: US Meat Ranchers Warn Major Companies Are ‘Investing’ In Bugs, Calls Low Beef Production ‘Crisis’)
The ban is in place even as the American livestock industry reels from an avian influenza outbreak. There have been 927 confirmed cases in all livestock across 17 states so far, 925 of which were in cattle, according to APHIS. Migratory birds are also dropping dead and the first human casualty emerged around Jan. 7.
Texas Commissioner for Agriculture Sid Miller warned Dec. 23 that shutting the Mexico-U.S. border “could send shockwaves through the beef market” and “disrupt” business for Texas cattle ranchers, as Mexico was a significant exporter of cattle and beef to the U.S.
“Cutting off that supply could lead to a bottleneck, reducing the number of cattle available to feedlots, processors, and grocery stores,” he wrote.
“I get calls every single day from people asking for cattle,” Alvaro Bustillos, president of Vaquero Trading, a livestock procurement company in El Paso, told KXXV. “Key steps in the production value chain are being stopped because people cannot source cattle.”
“Fewer cattle mean higher beef prices, increasing inflation at the checkout line,” Miller added.
APHIS announced $165 million in emergency funding Dec. 13 to shield American animals from the infestation and to fight it in Mexico and Central America.
Screwworms burrow into warm-blooded animals, such as livestock and humans, often through open wounds or soft tissues, and feed on the flesh until the animal dies if untreated, according to APHIS. The worms — transmitted by screwworm flies — do not feed on dead animals.
The U.S. eradicated screwworm infestation over 30 years ago. The disease resurfaced in 2016 among deer in Florida. The USDA responded with an aggressive campaign that included introducing sterile screwworm flies to the environment until the worm was eradicated again by March 2017.
The U.S. has maintained a biological barrier in eastern Panama since 2006 to prevent the infestation from crossing northward from endemic countries in South America and the Caribbean. However, the worm breached the barrier and has been crawling northward from Panama to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico, with cases rising since 2023, according to APHIS.
Miller argued that the discovery of the worm in one cow in Mexico meant that the barrier still worked. He expressed concern that the import ban could amount to government overreaction, “a cure that could end up being worse than the disease.”
The U.S. is working to create a similar barrier on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico, help to eradicate the screwworm in the affected areas abroad and reestablish the Panama barrier.
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
