Overview
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed a second infected calf in Zavala County on Friday, about 5.6 miles from the first reported case, and established a containment zone with inspections and livestock movement controls.
- Officials are already releasing sterile male screwworm flies by air and ground and say they have dispersed roughly 130 million since January while planning to scale production to hundreds of millions per week.
- Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster and is pressing to accelerate a USDA‑funded sterile‑fly breeding facility near Edinburg to boost output faster than current timelines allow.
- Canada’s food agency temporarily barred livestock imports from Texas, reflecting immediate trade impacts that could widen if the parasite spreads beyond the quarantine area.
- Screwworm larvae burrow into living flesh and can kill livestock through secondary infection; the Sterile Insect Technique works by flooding areas with sterilized males so females lay infertile eggs, a method that eradicated the fly from the U.S. in the 1960s but requires much larger production than current facilities supply.