Sterile Fly Dispersal for New World Screwworm
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
The threat of New World Screwworm on U.S. cattle continues to loom near our southern border. Last June, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins announced a sweeping five-pronged plan to enhance the ability to detect, control and eliminate the pest.
Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Dudley Hoskins says big steps have been made on one of the pillars of that program: sterile fly production.
Hoskins… “ One of those key pillars under that five prong plan was enhancing our capability and infrastructure and enhancing the sterile fly production that we currently have. We're still relying on our COPEG facility in Panama that produces about a hundred million sterile flies per week. We continue to disperse those wherever and however we can when we're seeing the highest risk movement of flies in Mexico. The secretary has initiated an additional dispersal facility in Tampico, Mexico that we completed construction on last November. That helps us be more nimble in our aerial dispersal in Mexico, places hard to get to. So that's been a critical asset to us in that toolbox. Most recently, the secretary was in McAllen, Texas at Moore Air Base and participated in a ribbon cutting ceremony to bring the new dispersal facility online in McAllen. That dispersal facility is operational. It's dispersing flies as we speak.”
With existing and planned production facilities fully operational, USDA says they will have up to 500 million sterile files per week to fight this pest all the way back to the Darién Gap.
