The US and Mexico have inaugurated a sterile fly production plant in southern Chiapas, a milestone in efforts to contain the New World screwworm outbreak that has spread across borders and disrupted cattle trade.
Combating the Outbreak
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins attended the opening of the facility in Metapa de Dominguez, near the Guatemala border. The plant, a US-Mexico project costing over $50 million, will eventually produce up to 100 million sterile flies weekly to suppress the wild screwworm population.
The parasite burrows into the flesh of warm-blooded animals and can be fatal if untreated. Despite the new capacity, experts have said the total supply of sterile flies will fall short of what is needed to eradicate the pest.
Impact on Cattle Trade
The facility’s launch comes more than 18 months after Mexico confirmed its first screwworm case in November 2024. The outbreak then advanced northward through Mexico and eventually into the US, where the first cases in decades were confirmed in early June in Texas. Those cases have heightened concerns about the risk to the US cattle industry.
US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins expressed optimism about the efforts to combat the outbreak, stating, ‘Our countries have beaten this before, 40, 50 years ago. We will beat the New World screwworm again sooner than anyone would have thought because of the extraordinary work that is going to happen at this facility.’
The US has kept its border mostly closed to Mexican live cattle since May 2025, disrupting a trade that previously supplied more than 1 million animals annually to US feedlots. The move has squeezed supply in Texas, leaving some feedlots with empty pens and contributing to historically tight cattle inventories.
Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
