[HN Gopher] Deadly Screwworm Parasite's Comeback Threatens Texas...
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Deadly Screwworm Parasite's Comeback Threatens Texas Cattle, US
Beef Supply
Author : nkurz
Score : 92 points
Date : 2025-05-03 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| perihelions wrote:
| https://archive.is/ul6JR
| Krasnol wrote:
| > "New World Screwworm: The Threat Returns."
|
| I love this. The whole country is like movie theme parks patched
| together seamlessly.
|
| I wonder how the king will frame this.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > I wonder how the king will frame this.
|
| The screwworm cases are in Mexico according to the article,
| threatening Texas / US cattle. So the framing would be pretty
| straightforward. One can imagine the word "vermin" rearing its
| head.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Is ivermectin not an option? My fat pet rat got mites and was
| miserable, itchy and too painful to scratch. One grain of rice
| dose from the infamous horse tube cleared him right up.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3840994/ Seems to show that it
| does, but I guess the logistics of keeping a herd of cattle
| covered by giving shots every two weeks may be difficult. And
| there still is damage to the animal
| giardini wrote:
| Ivermectin liquid "pour-on" is poured along the backbone of
| cattle (just as you do in cats and dogs with flea
| medications).
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| The study I linked to showing the effectiveness of
| Ivermectin was only done subcutaneously. I did not find a
| study on the effectiveness of non-subcutaneous Ivermectin
| treatments on screw worms.
|
| Given one of the areas they focused on the study is the
| scrotal area post castration, I don't expect that a pour on
| would cover that area well enough to be an effective
| treatment. Happy to read other studies if you have them
| showing otherwise.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| You can use it topically but typically it's an oral dose.
| MillironX wrote:
| There are injectable and transdermal (pour-on and ear
| tag) forms for cattle and pigs. I'm not aware of an oral
| formulation for food animals, even though that's pretty
| common for horses.
| MillironX wrote:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9403981/
|
| The article you referred to (and I've seen linked elsewhere
| in this thread) is about "regular" screwworm ( _Chrysomya
| bezziana_ ). The recent outbreak is of New World Screwworm (
| _Cochliomyia hominivorax_ ). The article I've linked suggests
| that it is much harder to kill than regular screwworm (29% of
| calves developed myiasis even when treated with ivermectin).
| kergonath wrote:
| You still need to remove them, otherwise you have decomposing
| maggots in an infected would, which is a great way of killing
| whatever you were trying to save.
| davidw wrote:
| Quick, get those cattle a special preparation of carrot juice,
| cod liver oil and turmeric, stat!
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Ironically I bet ivermectin would actually be useful here.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Wrong type of worms. These are fly larva. Invermectin is
| useful against intestinal and heartworms.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| This old study found ivermectin efficacious in treating
| screw worm infected cattle:
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-0813
| ....
| nkurz wrote:
| I appreciate the attempt to ground the discussion in
| research, but as MillironX pointed out elsewhere,
| ivermectin turns out to be less effective on Cochliomyia
| hominivorax (which the article is about) than on
| Chrysomya bezziana (which the paper you cited is about).
| giardini wrote:
| It is, but there is no "silver bullet" for idiocy, as you can
| see.
| alganet wrote:
| There is: stop measuring intelligence.
| mlinhares wrote:
| We're getting there. Soon numbers and statistics will be
| meaningless.
| alganet wrote:
| I don't understand what you mean by that.
|
| What I'm saying is that intelligence is impossible to
| measure.
| andsoitis wrote:
| _" Now, after being eradicated from the US since the early 1980s
| and largely forgotten, top veterinarians expect the screwworm
| could be back as soon as the summer. More than 950 cases have
| been reported in Mexico so far this year, including one within
| miles of a livestock checkpoint in Chiapas. A resurgence in the
| US would have devastating consequences for farm animals and
| wildlife"_
| e40 wrote:
| I was surprised to learn recently that we import a LOT of
| cattle. It's the reason many other countries will not take US
| beef, because the provenance of our beef isn't as precise as it
| needs to be, for those foreign consumer laws.
| ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote:
| This is true of a lot of our food. Trump, now and in 2016,
| has been trying to force the UK to buy US chicken and the
| Brits are NOT having it because US food standards are below
| that of the UK.
| chneu wrote:
| We also treat our cows with antibiotics that a lot of
| countries ban. A lot of our meat is also treated with
| chemicals that other countries ban.
|
| It's why Europe won't import a lot of US beef.
| giardini wrote:
| Ivermectin kills screwworm. We've been using ivermectin regularly
| for years on Texas cattle. And there are other ways to deal with
| screwworm as the article states. Let the farmers and the
| appropriate agencies deal with it.
|
| Should you get screwworm see a doctor. If you can't afford a
| doctor or are an illegal alien and have screwworm then go to a
| local Texas _rancho_ and help apply ivermectin to their cattle.
| They will appreciate the help and you 'll get enough slathered on
| you to last a year.
| Loughla wrote:
| How will you treat the wild animal population?
|
| Or are you assuming that just treating livestock will solve the
| problem?
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Lots of things hurt cattle, but they do not threaten our
| domestic beef supply. They are just things for farmers and
| ranchers to deal with.
|
| Think of it this way: Leaving lug nuts loose in new cars does
| not threaten our nation's auto supply.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| Sure it does if you loosen enough of them to create
| hysteria.
| giardini wrote:
| Spoken like a true saboteur.
|
| But how many lug nuts must you loosen to create
| _hysteria_?
|
| And why do I have the peculiar feeling that you've never
| held a lug wrench in your hands?
| ben_w wrote:
| 15. Assuming 5 per wheel and applying the proverb of
| "three men make a tiger"*, they just have to be the new
| cars of three famous people who are likely to get in the
| news for a wheel falling off.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_men_make_a_tiger
| RecycledEle wrote:
| You can set out free (medicated) food for the wildlife. That
| will treat the vast majority of them.
| janice1999 wrote:
| That might work for once-off vaccinations of precisely
| targeted animals in densely populated areas but not
| delivering periodic high doses of medication to treat
| parasites to animals across 100s of millions of acres.
| giardini wrote:
| Loughla says: " _How will you treat the wild animal
| population?_ "
|
| Hunt 'em and eat 'em, yummm! If you're tough enough, as I do
| not doubt, you can eat the screwworms too, once cooked!8-))
| yieldcrv wrote:
| (Which is why it worked in that region of the country against
| covid
|
| Human hosts already had the worms too
|
| and it still killed the worms, allowing their own immune system
| to function correctly again)
| accrual wrote:
| This topic always leads me back to reading about the Darien Gap
| [0]. When eradication was working successfully, they had managed
| to push the screwworm population all the way back to the Gap and
| keep it out of major population/agriculture areas. There were (or
| are) yearly efforts to perform the sterile insect technique [1].
| Expensive to perform, but worth it for all the damage they'd
| otherwise cause if left unchecked.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dari%C3%A9n_Gap
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique
| beached_whale wrote:
| Not expensive at all. 10s of millions of dollars a year is my
| understanding.
| bglazer wrote:
| $200 million in total, approximately the cost of two (2) F35B
| fighter jets
|
| https://cr.usembassy.gov/sections-offices/aphis/screwworm-
| pr...
| janice1999 wrote:
| Arstechnica reports it "is estimated to have saved US
| farmers $900 million every year." Not sure where they
| source the number from.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/05/screwworms-are-
| coming...
| chasil wrote:
| I had confused botflies for screw worms, but they are
| different.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botfly
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochliomyia
| labster wrote:
| Oh well, we can just import beef with our renowned free trade
| policies.
| throwup238 wrote:
| This is why a competent and well staffed bureaucracy is so
| important. Screwworm is really easy to eliminate by flooding
| their population with males sterilized by radiation (females only
| mate once in their lifetime so their population falls off _fast_
| ). There are factories in Latin America already set up to do so
| at large scale, all it would take is a contract with the USDA to
| guarantee enough supply for the states.
|
| Edit: Hah, I get to eat my words. Turns out USDA and APHIS have
| been trying to fly planes over Mexico to release the sterile
| flies, but the Mexican government has been restricting the flight
| days and denying landing permission, which has hampered the
| program. Looks like the Mexican bureaucracy is the one failing
| here, and USDA/APHIS might be running pre-emptive releases in the
| US (but I can't find a source on that). They just agreed to lift
| those restrictions and cooperate more at the end of April.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > There are factories in Latin America already set up to do so
| at large scale, all it would take is a contract with the USDA
| to guarantee enough supply for the states.
|
| According to the article the cases are in Mexico, so I don't
| know that "Latin American origin" is a silver bullet.
| slicktux wrote:
| Mexico is just a small portion of Latin America; A few places
| I can think of is Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil which have
| huge stockyards...
| bastawhiz wrote:
| Why wouldn't the USDA pay to eliminate pests in another
| country if it meant preventing those pests from reaching US
| farmers?
| creato wrote:
| They did exactly that for decades.
| dessimus wrote:
| > Why wouldn't the USDA pay...
|
| Maybe because there is an executive body hell-bent on the
| slashing expenditures regardless of any perceived benefit?
| tomrod wrote:
| Perhaps their supporters should reconsider the burn-the-
| world-despite-who-it-hurts philosophy.
| ikiris wrote:
| Doge probably saw it as anti male propoganda. THEYRE
| STERALIZIN OUR FLIES
| krunck wrote:
| > This is why a competent and well staffed bureaucracy is so
| important.
|
| Try: "This is why a competent and well staffed science
| institute is so important."
|
| Bureaucracy not required.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Who exactly do you think staffs this part of a science
| institute? Bureaucracy is just another word for the kind of
| well-staffed administrative system that can handle these
| tasks.
| 8note wrote:
| the administrative parts - managers and approvers, aren't
| doing the science or the application thereof.
|
| a couple university students in a van going around
| releasing flies every 10 miles is not a bureaucracy, nor a
| stand in for a bureaucracy
| ryandamm wrote:
| You think that would be sufficient? Did you read the
| article?
|
| I did, and I have previously read an article in (iirc)
| The Atlantic about the screwfly program when it was
| working. It was a monumental effort to push screwflies
| back to the Darien Gap, involving widespread coordination
| of cattle ranchers and government workers, constant
| flyovers of planes dropping huge numbers of sterile
| flies, and a massive breeding program.
|
| Two university students in a van can get about as much
| done as it sounds like. Some problems require
| coordination, government involvement, and yes, the
| organization -- i.e., bureaucracy -- that implies.
|
| (Edit: it was The Atlantic, not The New Yorker. Comment
| further down has the link, but here it is: https://www.th
| eatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...)
| fallingknife wrote:
| I think a lot of the objections here aren't really
| bureaucracy in terms of government employees doing things.
| A lot of what people mean when they complain about
| "government bureaucracy" is really that it often seems to
| be 20 people taking 6 months to do something that should
| take 5 people 6 weeks. So discussions on this tend to get
| confusing.
| jen20 wrote:
| > it often seems to be 20 people taking 6 months to do
| something that should take 5 people 6 weeks
|
| Sounds just like "enterprise" IT to me, tbh.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Leadership can reform enterprise IT, sometimes including
| staffing cuts while also improving productivity. I have
| personally seen this happen. It _can_ actually get
| better.
|
| This is why some people are optimistic about recent
| efforts at doing the same in government bureaucracy. It's
| possible to trend upwards.
| analog31 wrote:
| Regular people (including me) think the same thing about
| why software projects take so long. In fact I consider
| engineering to be a form of bureaucracy. And I've had
| long conversations about it with friends who are
| developers, but it's still hard for an outsider to fully
| grasp why it's so hard. In turn, they can't understand
| why my job can't be replaced by AI.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The reason bureaucracies seem efficient is that they must
| be able to (1) complete the mission reliably over long
| periods of time, in the face of (2) staff churn and loss,
| without (3) collapsing the first time a critical mass of
| experts leaves the org. This means you have to sacrifice
| systems that rely on the enthusiasm of "10x experts" in
| favor of systems that can reliably recruit talent (at GS
| salaries.) And this is before you get to the mountains of
| political crap placed on an org by elected leaders.
|
| It is incredibly challenging to create orgs that reliably
| stay on-mission over many years.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Companies manage to handle all 3 of those things without
| the inefficiently (or at least a lot less of it).
|
| As for the terrible salaries and mountains of political
| crap, that's the real issue here. But these are
| changeable and shouldn't just be accepted as inevitable
| as is so often done by defenders of government
| bureaucracy.
| danso wrote:
| How is a bureaucracy not required when the solution involves
| coordinated multinational logistics to produce and distribute
| hundreds of millions of flies?
| johnisgood wrote:
| Yeah because bureaucracy (in its original term) is
| efficient at that. /s
|
| Wait a couple of years, and then maybe.
| kergonath wrote:
| This is surreal. The evil bureaucracy has successfully
| been doing it since the 1960s. It worked. And yes, it was
| efficient.
|
| Now, the problem is that if you alienate your neighbours
| they stop wanting to play nice. Also, bureaucracies do
| not work when you fire civil servants indiscriminately.
| It's not the bureaucracy doing this, it's the guy who
| told you that the country would work better without it.
| kergonath wrote:
| The science is done. We know how to deal with this insect,
| the American government successfully eradicated it from North
| America ~25 years ago. Now it's only logistics and diplomacy.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| It was partially the new tariffs that put a stop to the program
| and the April 30 agreement puts an end to tariffs on equipment
| associated with screwworm treatment program.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Good job the US is on such good terms with Latin America at the
| moment
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| That competent and well-staffed bureaucracy is important also
| because they patiently work through these problems with their
| counterparts on the other side of the the Rio Grande.
|
| Except they got fired, so now there's no one to do that work.
| We got what we wanted. God help us all 'cause no one else is.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| More on the screwworm barrier and how it was established. This is
| one of my favorite "magazine style" feature stories.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Salon had a lovely article last week, on how deteriorating
| relationships between US and Mexico is threatening the
| effective work the US had been doing of creating and spreading
| sterile male flies that have successfully stopped the Screwworm
| invasion. https://www.salon.com/2025/04/28/we-once-rid-the-us-
| of-this-...
| canucker2016 wrote:
| Ars has an article on screwworms - 1 guess as to the writer.
|
| see https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/05/screwworms-are-
| coming...
|
| The last word of the article has a link to a video with very
| unsettling imagery involving screwworms.
| unfitted2545 wrote:
| good day to be a vegan.
| vips7L wrote:
| It's always a good day to not participate in the cruelty and
| evil that is animal farming.
| timschmidt wrote:
| There's a big difference between https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/Concentrated_animal_feeding_op... and traditional family
| farms. In a traditional family farm, animals can live happy
| and relatively full lives while offsetting a tremendous
| amount of petroleum products in the form of fuel,
| insecticide, herbicide, fertilizer, equipment, etc.
| vips7L wrote:
| Whatever lets you sleep at night my friend.
| timschmidt wrote:
| You ever watch a plant filmed in time lapse? They're
| active just like animals. They feel and communicate and
| are our relatives just the same. Everything on this
| planet eats a living cousin, save for the photo and
| chemosynthesizers. Such is life. I sleep just fine. The
| backyard garden is fruitful. The chimkins are happy and
| laying eggs. Thankful for the opportunity to enjoy it!
| aziaziazi wrote:
| > traditional family farms.
|
| > relatively full lives
|
| Thanks to point out the difference between industrial and
| family farm. However I'm not sure what farms in particular
| you have in mind but anything commercial has non incentive
| to let the animal live a "relatively full life": the meat
| of a relatively old animal taste far from what people are
| used to eat and is (way) more expensive to produce. Some
| producers add a few weeks to the legal minimum to let them
| grow a bit more but nothing near their natural expectancy.
| Lets take chickens for exemple, here in EU:
|
| - standard are harvest 35 days (32 if for export)
|
| - certified (floor, outdoor) at 56 days
|
| - highest quality (Bio and local certifications): 81 day
|
| - egg poultry final harvest: around 1 year and half when
| egg production slow down
|
| - natural life expectancy of a chicken: 8-10 years.
|
| > can live happy
|
| "happier" would be more accurate IMHO but as some people
| point our frequently: we can't know for sure how another
| animal feels so it's only guess. What we can do is remove
| the farm fences and do not force them onto the slaughter
| house. They'll choose themselves to go to what makes them
| happy.
| timschmidt wrote:
| I come from Mennonites. Plenty of animals on the farm are
| allowed to live full lives. Anything doing any kind of
| work can be, which all animals on the farm are capable
| of. Milk and eggs don't require culling. Even layers past
| their prime will still eat pests and scratch manure into
| the soil and teach the young to do same.
|
| Joel Salatin practices the sort of farming I'm familiar
| with: https://www.youtube.com/@farmlikealunatic
|
| This is what happy chickens look like:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VHvDEzpD5es
|
| and happy pigs:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B6qk0IbCC5U
|
| The figures you quote are not for heritage breeds. They
| are for breeds which have been selected for extremely
| rapid growth, often to the detriment of the health of the
| animal (and presumably the person consuming them).
|
| > the meat of a relatively old animal taste far from what
| people are used to eat and is (way) more expensive to
| produce
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coq_au_vin has been the
| definition of a peasant dish for a century or two at
| least.
|
| > but as some people point our frequently: we can't know
| for sure how another animal feels so it's only guess.
|
| Anyone who's spent time with animals knows. As surely as
| you know if your dog is happy. People are the ones who
| hide their feelings.
| chneu wrote:
| No there isn't. This is just stuff y'all tell yourselves to
| make ya feel better about your cruelty and over
| consumption.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| It's a great day to be heavily punishing imports!
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| Heavily punishing _your own citizens_ for buying imported goods
| in a highly-integrated global economy.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| With this and bird flu and inflation, it wouldn't hurt people to
| learn to eat less meat throughout the week. A day or two
| vegetarian so if any of these things escalate at least you have a
| feel for it -\\_(tsu)_/-
| danso wrote:
| Tangential aside but what does this mean:
|
| > _live demonstrations on how to handle cattle to reduce
| stress.(Every cow pie released by a stressed-out cow before it
| gets weighed by meat processers amounts to $6 in lost profit.)_
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| Ranchers get paid a flat per pound price for whole animals.
| When they take a shit, their total weight goes down and thus
| the ranchers lose the flat per pound price for that pile of
| shit, which evidently is about $6.
| scandox wrote:
| I first learned about these delightful creatures after reading
| The Screwfly Solution by Alice Sheldon:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution
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