Two more cases of the New World screwworm have been confirmed in Texas, demonstrating the difficulty of stopping the spread of a pest that could potentially devastate the nation’s cattle industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Monday.
The screwworm is actually a fly, which produces a larva that eats live flesh instead of dead material. Females lay their eggs in open wounds of any warm-blooded animal, such as cattle, but wildlife, pets and occasionally even humans can be infested.
The USDA said the new cases were found in a calf and a dog, hundreds of miles apart in La Salle and Andrews counties. That brings the total number of confirmed cases to four. The screwworm was first discovered in a 3-week-old calf last week, and a second case was found only miles away in a young calf.
How did the DOGE cuts affect people working on this at the federal level or with federal funding?
According to this article,
The return of screwworm comes after the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, launched by the Trump administration, last year cut funding for a project dedicated to monitoring and containing New World screwworm in Central America.
The funding was axed days before the U.S. ended a temporary suspension of cattle imports from Mexico, meaning livestock was allowed to cross the border without any of the monitoring previously funded by the U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID).