US Fly Production Plant to Open by End of 2027 to Fight Screwworm: USDA

The government is spending $750 million for the facility in Texas.

A worker handles a tray with Mediterranean fruit flies inside a bio-factory as Mexico's government reconditions a plant to become the new sterile screwworm fly facility, part of the country's effort to eradicate the flesh-eating parasite, in Metapa de Dominguez, Mexico, on Oct. 17, 2025. Daniel Becerril/Reuters

The first production facility for sterile flies in the United States is slated to open by the end of 2027, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Feb. 9.

“That facility, the big facility, will be open ... by the end of next year,” Rollins said at a briefing with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

The USDA in 2025 said it would be building a new facility to produce sterile New World screwworm flies. Officials said it would be located at Moore Air Force Base in Edinburgh, Texas, close to the border with Mexico.

The new facility will be able to produce up to 300 million sterile flies per week, according to the USDA.

The United States currently produces 100 million flies every week at a facility in Panama and has been distributing them in Mexico and Texas from a facility in Tampico, Mexico.

Boosting the number of sterile flies is a key prong of a strategy to keep the pest, which primarily targets animals, out of the United States, officials say.

Female New World screwworm flies only mate once, so if they mate with a sterile male, they are unable to lay eggs that hatch.

Other steps have included halting imports of livestock through the southern border.

Rollins and Abbott held a press conference to announce the completion of a new sterile fly dispersal facility in Edinburgh, which better positions the United States to disperse the flies.

“This facility will be a critical part of our overall efforts to combat the New World screwworm, allowing USDA to disperse sterile flies more readily in northern Mexico and here in the southern United States,” Rollins said.

“America is no longer going to count on other countries coming to our rescue,” Abbott said. “Instead, America is going to take care of ourselves, including dealing with the approach of the screwworm as it gets closer to our border.”

He previously issued a disaster declaration that enables the quick mobilization of state assets to prevent the parasite from entering and spreading in Texas.

A screwworm sample displayed at the veterinary clinic in Tapachula, Chiapas state, Mexico, on July 4, 2025. Daniel Becerril/Reuters

New World screwworm was inside the United States for decades, since at least 1842, but government efforts eradicated the pest in the country in the 1960s. U.S. and Mexico officials later successfully eradicated the screwworm from Mexico.

A barrier along the border of Panama and Colombia prevented the reintroduction of the screwworm, but it was recently breached. Rollins said the breach happened because of illegal immigration, which skyrocketed from 2021 through early 2025.

At least one travel-related case has been identified in a human in the United States, but there were no signs that the person transmitted screwworm to other people or animals.