Texas Gov. Greg Abbott voiced alarm Friday about delays in launching a new facility designed to produce sterile New World screwworm flies, warning that waiting more than a year to begin operations could devastate the nation’s $113 billion cattle sector as flesh-eating larvae pose an escalating threat.
Abbott promised that Texas would assist the U.S. Department of Agriculture in fast-tracking construction of the $750 million production facility located outside Edinburg, Texas, approximately 20 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. He declared Texas is prepared to allocate state funds to ensure construction continues “24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Speaking at a news conference in the state capital of Austin, Abbott warned that without increased sterile fly production, “We cannot make it through a second summer.”
Federal agriculture officials this week verified an outbreak of New World screwworm fly larvae in a 3-week-old calf located in La Pryor, Texas, roughly 100 miles southwest of San Antonio and 50 miles from the Mexico border. This marks the first confirmed case in Texas since 1966.
The Texas facility represents the larger of two fly-production plants receiving USDA funding.
Additionally, the USDA allocated $21 million to modify a facility in southern Mexico, converting it from fruit fly breeding to screwworm fly production. That plant is scheduled to begin operations next month, ultimately generating 100 million flies weekly.
The Texas facility will span an area equivalent to two Costco stores, according to Rear Admiral Michael Schmoyer, a member of the USDA’s screwworm response team. The plant is designed to generate up to 300 million flies per week.
Authorities believe both facilities are essential to eliminate the fly from the U.S., Mexico and Central America.
Schmoyer noted that federal officials have already compressed the planning and construction schedule significantly — completing design work in months rather than a full year. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins indicated the USDA anticipates the facility could become operational ahead of its scheduled November 2027 launch date.
However, Abbott emphasized that Texas is committed to accelerating construction even further.
“This is going to spread over the course of the summer,” he said regarding the fly.
While untreated New World screwworm fly larvae infestations can be fatal to animals, a dozen government-approved treatments are now available for livestock. Federal and state authorities have emphasized that the fly’s larvae — which consume living tissue — do not contaminate meat or fruit.
“There’s a food production issue, but not a food safety issue,” Abbott stated.
Derrell Peel, a professor of agribusiness at Oklahoma State University, said beef supplies likely won’t be impacted unless authorities impose broader cattle movement restrictions or unless outbreaks occur in feedlots or other concentrated cattle operations. He doesn’t anticipate either scenario.
“It’s probably not a major market issue,” he said.
Consumers are facing record beef prices due to limited cattle availability, and Peel projects prices will climb higher when ranchers remove heifers from the supply chain to rebuild herds. However, he said the screwworm’s appearance in Texas “doesn’t change the supply fundamentals.”
Screwworm outbreaks in Mexico beginning in 2024 led U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to halt U.S. imports of Mexican cattle in May 2025. Mexican imports previously totaled approximately 1.2 million animals annually and declined roughly 80% last year, based on industry data.
But Peel noted that Mexican imports represented only about 3% of the U.S. cattle supply.
“It’s been just one more thing on top of others,” he said, not a primary price driver.
The New World screwworm fly plagued U.S. cattle ranchers annually during warm weather from at least the 1930s through the 1960s.
However, breeding sterile flies and releasing swarms from aircraft eliminated it from the U.S. by the early 1970s, except for a brief outbreak among deer in the Florida Keys in 2016 and a case confirmed in a Maryland man who traveled to El Salvador last year. Until an outbreak in Panama in 2023, the fly had been considered eliminated outside its remote, southernmost region bordering Colombia.
Females mate once during their monthslong lifespans, and when they breed with sterile males, their eggs fail to hatch after being deposited in open wounds and mucous membranes of warm-blooded animals, including cattle, wild mammals, household pets and humans.
After the U.S. and other countries eliminated the fly previously, they closed fly-breeding facilities until only one remained in the Western Hemisphere, located in Panama. It can generate approximately 117 million flies weekly.
However, previous elimination campaigns required roughly 500 million flies per week, said Schmoyer during Abbott’s news conference.
Schmoyer calculated that the USDA has already released 130 million flies in Texas since January, primarily from aircraft, with current drops totaling about 4 million weekly. The agency is also releasing another 4 million weekly on the ground as pupae, which are flies in the developmental stage between larvae and adult.
Despite deploying millions of flies, the USDA must carefully target where to release them, Schmoyer explained to reporters. Federal and state officials are utilizing scientific models to forecast the fly’s movement patterns.
“In essence, it’s not where the flies are today, but where they could be weeks from now,” he said.
The scientific approach includes trap deployment, and Texas State Veterinarian Bud Dinges said they’ve positioned traps up to 120 miles from La Pryor to track the fly’s movement.
