AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The New World screwworm seems like something from a horror movie. The flesh-eating maggot burrows into the wounds of warm-blooded animals. Creeped out yet? The U.S. Department of Agriculture has confirmed cases in more than 30 cows, sheeps and goats over the past month in Texas. The screwworm has made its way up through Mexico over the last year and a half. KJZZ's Nina Kravinsky reports on the cross-border efforts to get the parasite under control.
NINA KRAVINSKY, BYLINE: Outside the ranching cooperative store in Hermosillo, Sonora, saguaro cactuses stretch toward a bright blue sky. Inside, ranchers in white cowboy hats file in to order feed and buy supplies. The walls and shelves are lined with tools, saddles and medicine.
VICTOR LEZAMA: (Speaking Spanish).
KRAVINSKY: Victor Lezama is the veterinarian who runs this depot for the state's cattle ranchers' union.
LEZAMA: (Speaking Spanish).
KRAVINSKY: One newer addition? A pamphlet at the checkout counter. On the front is a blown-up photo of a single New World screwworm bearing its signature mouth hooks, which look like little black fangs, that it uses to screw into living animal tissue.
LEZAMA: (Speaking Spanish).
KRAVINSKY: This Mexican border state - Sonora, directly south of Arizona - hasn't had any cases. But as the parasite has crept up from the border with Guatemala to the U.S.-Mexico border over the past year and a half, the Mexican government has reached out to ranchers. It's provided many with kits they can use to collect samples of possible screwworm maggots and send them in for testing, and with medicine to treat open wounds. Julio Berdegue is Mexico's former agriculture minister, who served in that position until this spring.
JULIO BERDEGUE: If you lose the trust - the collaboration of ranchers? You're dead.
KRAVINSKY: If left untreated, the parasite can be deadly, and it now threatens the U.S.' already low cattle supply. That could raise beef prices from already sky-high levels. The screwworm's arrival in the U.S. comes as the country's cattle herd reaches a 75-year low, even as demand for beef in the U.S. remains strong. Dudley Hoskins, an undersecretary at USDA, says the two countries' agriculture departments have been in close contact as they try to beat back the northward spread of the New World screwworm.
DUDLEY HOSKINS: Mexico is a critical partner in all this with us.
KRAVINSKY: The U.S. formally eradicated the parasite in the 1960s by releasing sterile male flies into the environment. Those sterile flies mate with normal screwworm flies to dwindle the population, and it remains what most experts consider the most effective tool against the parasite. But in the decades since, the sterile-fly program ramped down. Until this summer, a USDA facility in Panama was the only one producing sterile flies.
PHILLIP KAUFMAN: We don't want very many more of these infestation zones, or it's really going to stress the supplies that we have.
KRAVINSKY: Phillip Kaufman is the head of the entomology department at Texas A&M University. The U.S. and Mexico are now rushing to produce more flies. USDA has started construction on a facility in South Texas, which is set to start producing sterile flies next year. Late last month, they together inaugurated a production plant in southern Mexico.
GAMEZ LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
KRAVINSKY: Back in Sonora, a nearly yearlong border closure for Mexican livestock to protect the U.S. from screwworm has meant prices on cattle here have plummeted, ranchers like Gamez Lopez say, since so many are no longer being exported to the United States.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
KRAVINSKY: That's had a drastic impact on his business, he says. He's hopeful that the United States and Mexico will figure out how to eradicate the parasite again together so the industry here can get back to normal soon.
For NPR News, I'm Nina Kravinsky in Hermosillo, Mexico. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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