Overview
- USDA confirmed a New World screwworm infestation in a three‑week‑old calf in Zavala County, Texas, a detection officials verified on Wednesday and sent to the National Veterinary Services Laboratories for confirmation.
- State and federal authorities established a roughly 12–20 km quarantine around La Pryor, set movement controls and checkpoints, and formed a unified incident command to coordinate the response.
- Officials have deployed sterile‑male flies by air and ground, increased trapping and inspections in the area, and said the infected calf is being treated and showing improvement.
- Authorities stress the immediate risk to the food supply and to human health is low, but cattle markets reacted with higher feeder‑cattle futures and experts warn an unchecked spread could cost Texas producers in the high hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.
- The detection follows a northward march of screwworms through Central America and Mexico since 2022 and revives the Sterile Insect Technique used to eradicate the pest from the U.S. in the 1960s, with officials scaling up sterile‑fly production and border surveillance to prevent further incursions.