COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KRHD) — The U.S. government and state of Texas are launching a major effort to protect the livestock industry from the New World Screwworm, a parasite that feeds on living mammals and threatens to impact both the cattle industry and consumer grocery prices.
"This can result in billions of dollars of losses a year," Governor Greg Abbott said. "It could truly crush the cattle industry as well as other livestock industry in Texas."
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U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced a $750 million investment to build a sterile fly production facility in Texas, approximately 20 miles from the southern border.
"Farm security is national security," Rollins said.
The parasitic threat has significant implications for consumers across the country, according to officials.
"It endangers our livestock industry and it threatens the stability of beef prices for consumers across America," Rollins said. "That's a dinner table issue as Governor Abbott mentioned and one that affects every American home and community, directly affecting the cost of groceries and therefore the cost of living."
The new facility will produce sterile flies as part of a strategy to combat the parasite's spread.
"Hopefully within a year we'll have that moving and again that 300 million additional sterile flies in addition to what we're already producing in Panama and Mexico should allow us to eradicate and control this forever for the distant future," Rollins said.
Dr. Phillip Kaufman from Texas A&M University's Department of Entomology told 15 ABC how the sterile fly program works.
"The sterile fly program works because the female fly in the wild, she only mates one time, and if we can get her to mate with one of our sterile males, she essentially will not deposit eggs that are alive — those eggs will never hatch," Dr. Kaufman said.
Beyond the sterile fly facility, the government is making additional investments.
"We are launching up to $100 million in addition to the $750 million to identify and deploy cutting edge technologies that can accelerate our response while the construction of the facility is underway, from novel traps and lures to modular sterile fly units," Rollins said.
For now, cattle, horse, and bison U.S. ports of entry remain closed at the southern border with Secretary Rollins saying that will be the case until the screwworm is pushed back.
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