NCBA backs revised USDA screw-worm playbook

USDA released an initial New World screw worm response plan last October, but the National Cattlemen's Beef Association raised concerns about proposed movement restrictions, saying they would be difficult for the supply chain and did not distinguish between disease and pest response. After further work. Senior director of government affairs with NCBA, Sigrid Johannes, shares updates on the revised USDA draft.

“There's a playbook that

everybody from the cow calf, you know, sector on up, should be able to implement, and it's something most importantly for us that isn't going to completely choke off the flow of business and the supply chain. If we have an outbreak in the US, we're always trying to strike that important balance between being aggressive enough to contain the problem but flexible enough that people can keep making a living.”

In addition, a new proposal is moving from the USA Agricultural Research Service to the Environmental Protection Agency that would register a product to boost production of sterile male flies use for control that product is actually a modified fly.

“It allows any facility that's producing those sterile insects to produce all male flies. And that is huge for us, because right now at COPEG, the place in Panama that's churning these guys out, half are female and half are male, and the males are the only ones that are actually performing for us, that are actually useful for this technique in the environment.”