Mesquite thorns scraped Dr. Michael Vickers’s white ranch truck like nails on a chalkboard as he drove through the underbrush of his South Texas ranch searching for cattle.
The longtime Texas veterinarian has about 100 head at his 1,000-acre ranch just south of Falfurrias, where deer, wild turkey, and javelin—akin to wild pigs—roam freely and vultures glide overhead.
Vickers told The Epoch Times that ranches such as his are in the crosshairs of the New World screwworm, which devastated Texas livestock and wildlife in the 1970s.
Vickers, who served on the Texas Animal Health Commission, called the screwworms a catastrophic threat. They began showing up in Central America two years ago and now threaten the U.S. cattle industry and food supply.
He said the United States is ill-prepared to deal with an outbreak.
“We don’t have the facilities to combat it like we did back in the ‘70s,” Vickers said.
As a 22-year-old veterinarian fresh out of college, Vickers was thrust into the Texas screwworm crisis. He’ll never forget the stench of rotting flesh from the screwworms.
Livestock, wildlife, and birds were eaten alive—some left with gaping wounds the size of grapefruit.
Screwworm flies will also infect people. Such a case was documented at a Maryland hospital in August after a person returned from a visit to El Salvador.
“We even had some people in some nursing homes here, and some elderly people die from screwworms with the larvae getting in their nostrils and migrating up into their brains,” Vickers said in a previous interview.
The ears of cattle and horses were eaten off, and sometimes the worms would eat into the middle ear, he said. Some had their eyes eaten out.
Vickers would use a dart gun to knock out infected animals so he could kill the worms burrowed into their flesh, then treat the wounds.
In those days, he used Pink Lady, a substance the color of Pepto-Bismol, or a black tar medication called Smear 62. Both contained now-banned pesticides and chemicals, although there is currently an FDA-approved Pink Lady wound dressing on the market.
When Vickers came across animals too far gone, he would euthanize them. Some ranchers shot terminally ill animals to put them out of their misery.
Screwworm infestations begin when a female screwworm fly lays eggs on a wound or the mucus membranes of a mammal, including humans. A wound as minor as a tick bite can attract a female fly to feed. A single female can produce about 3,000 eggs in a lifespan that can last up to 30 days.
Eggs hatch into larvae, or maggots, that burrow into the flesh of animals and begin to eat. The last major screwworm outbreak in Texas began in 1972 with 90,000 reported cases, and was mostly contained by 1975.
The screwworm’s recent northward advance coincided with a surge of illegal immigrants crossing the Darien Gap, a stretch of jungle between Panama and Colombia, once a natural barrier.
Vickers said he thinks that it’s likely that the deadly parasite will once again invade Texas, bringing a repeat of the grisly scenes he encountered half a century ago.
Ranchers and industry leaders are watching closely; a screwworm outbreak could cost Texas billions of dollars.
LeRoy Jackson, 63, runs a small herd of cattle on the La Providencia Ranch near Rio Grande City, Texas, which his family purchased in 1876.
Last week, as he and his wife, Brenda Jackson, stood outside a Starr County livestock auction, he told The Epoch Times that ranchers are taking precautions.
For them, it means spraying their herd with ivermectin, hoping that it protects against screwworms.
“I’m not going to lose the herd just because I’m being lazy,” he said.
The situation became more urgent when the screwworm was found 70 miles from Texas this fall.
Mexico’s Ministry of Agriculture confirmed that the parasite was detected in two unrelated cattle shipments from the Veracruz area of southern Mexico north to Nuevo Leon in September and October.
In a statement, Mexico’s National Service for Agro-Alimentary Health, Safety, and Quality (SENASICA) said the worms were contained before they could develop into flies.
SENASICA said its protocols were effective in mitigating “the risk of [screwworm] propagation.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has focused on producing sterile screwworm flies to shield the $100 billion U.S. cattle industry. But not enough sterile flies are being produced.
The lone fly-producing plant near Panama City, Panama, produces a maximum of 100 million sterile screwworm flies each week. To push the screwworm flies back to the Darien Gap, the USDA estimates that 500 million flies would need to be released weekly.
Sterile males mate with females, causing them to lay unviable eggs—a key strategy in past eradications.
This summer, the USDA blocked Mexican cattle imports and announced that it would invest $21 million to renovate a fruit fly production facility in Metapa, Mexico, to provide an additional 60 million to 100 million sterile screwworm flies.
Also, 750,000 sterilized flies are being trucked in and dispersed in the Nuevo León region twice per week, according to an X post by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins.
Rollins announced the construction of an $8.5 million sterile insect dispersal facility at Moore Air Force Base in Edinburg, Texas, expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Additionally, she announced a $750 million facility at the base that could “boost domestic sterile fly production by up to 300 million flies per week and could complement current production that already exists in Panama and Mexico.”
Read more here.
—Darlene Sanchez, Joseph Lord
BOOKMARKS
Israel’s cease-fire with Hamas will hold after a temporary resumption of hostilities over alleged violations of the peace deal by members of the terrorist group, The Epoch Times’ Jacob Burg and Joseph Lord reported. Israel said Hamas had violated the cease-fire by firing an anti-tank missile at Israeli Defense Forces in Rafah, killing two Israeli soldiers.
U.S. President Donald Trump will cut subsidies and raise tariffs on Colombia after a public dispute with the nation’s president, The Epoch Times’ Jacob Burg and Joseph Lord reported. Trump labeled Colombian President Gustavo Petro an “illegal drug leader” on Sunday.
FBI Director Kash Patel and the Secret Service confirmed that a hunting stand with a line of sight to an Air Force One exit area was found near the Palm Beach Airport before President Donald Trump was set to arrive, The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reported. Patel confirmed that the FBI and Secret Service (USSS) are investigating the matter, but no person has yet been linked to the stand.
Federal officials will enforce changes to the food stamp program, formally the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), beginning in November. The changes will cut federal funding for SNAP by $187 billion through 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office. SNAP gives money to people to buy groceries. The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber reported on what to know about the changes to the program
