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Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

usda.gov

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Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#171

Post by b112 »

chris_wot wrote: post #162
tptacek wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get that there was a president between 2020 and now, right? Nobody is sticking up for Trump; they're just saying, this particular bad thing isn't a DOGE outcome.

If this particular bad thing was bad before DOGE, then it’s far worse under DOGE. It’s a particularly ridiculous argument.

Knowing how and why a thing happened, is far more important than political grandstanding.

The doge cuts may affect the future of this program, but have absolutely positively nothing to do with the situation now. Nothing. Not a thing.

It is fine to say doge will make this neglect worse, but the neglect happened for a decade.

And that's important. That's vital to understanding why, and how it happened.

And that is absolutely not a ridiculous concept.

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#172

Post by GeekyBear »

ajmurmann wrote: post #19
neutered_knot wrote: post #15

A story from 2020 about how effective the US funded anti-screwworm program used to be. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea... Archive link: https://archive.ph/3sD9d

Why is it "used to be"? I've heard about the program before and thought it was incredible. What happened to it? Edit: Brief research tells me the screwworms broke though to Mexico in November 2024 after cases started increasing north of the Darian Gap throughout 2023 ( https://www.aphis.usda.gov/news/program-update/new-world-scr... ). It does seem like the funding now is happening through USDA rather than USAID ( htt…

> Why is it "used to be"?

> Decades ago, screwworms were endemic throughout Central America and the southern US. However, governments across the regions used intensive, coordinated control efforts to push the flies southward. Screwworms were eliminated from the US around 1966, and were pushed downward through Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s. They were eventually declared eliminated from Panama in 2006, with the population held at bay by a biological barrier at the Darién Gap, at the border of Panama and Colombia.

However, in 2022, the barrier was breached, and the flies began advancing northward, primarily through unmonitored livestock movements. The latest surveillance suggests the flies are now about 370 miles south of Texas.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/08/texas-prepares-for-wa...

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#173

Post by delfinom »

throwup238 wrote: post #46
ajmurmann wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it "used to be"? I've heard about the program before and thought it was incredible. What happened to it? Edit: Brief research tells me the screwworms broke though to Mexico in November 2024 after cases started increasing north of the Darian Gap throughout 2023 ( https://www.aphis.usda.gov/news/program-update/new-world-scr... ). It does seem like the funding now is happening through USDA rather than USAID ( htt…

Funding was recently cut but this infestation has been building for years. The key failure that caused this current outbreak was during COVID. The lockdowns shut down both the release flights by the US and the mosquito breeding facilities in Latina America, grinding the whole pest control program to a halt.

The funding was never cut. That was misinfo spread by morons because there was a typical Trump dispute of "mexico will pay for it". But the reality was that was in talks of a Mexico specific coverage program. The Panama program was never touched and is run by a third party agency with stakes holders consisting of the USDA and Panama government.

But yes the current outbreak built up since COVID.

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#174

Post by timr »

throwup238 wrote: post #46
ajmurmann wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it "used to be"? I've heard about the program before and thought it was incredible. What happened to it? Edit: Brief research tells me the screwworms broke though to Mexico in November 2024 after cases started increasing north of the Darian Gap throughout 2023 ( https://www.aphis.usda.gov/news/program-update/new-world-scr... ). It does seem like the funding now is happening through USDA rather than USAID ( htt…

Funding was recently cut but this infestation has been building for years. The key failure that caused this current outbreak was during COVID. The lockdowns shut down both the release flights by the US and the mosquito breeding facilities in Latina America, grinding the whole pest control program to a halt.

From the other link on the front page about this subject [1]:

> Illegal cattle smuggling, long considered one of the most efficient money-laundering routes for the drug cartels which terrorised San Pedro Sula, is regarded as the main reason for the accelerating advance. Up to 800,000 cattle a year are illicitly raised in nature reserves, such as the UNESCO-protected Rio Platano Biosphere in Honduras, and then smuggled by boat and truck up to Mexico. The flies, of course, travel with the livestock, embedded in cattle hides, accelerating their advance.

> “Everything indicates that illegal cattle routes from Central America are the arteries through which the screw worm is circulating again toward Mexico,” wrote Jeremy Radachowsky, director for Mesoamerican and the Western Caribbean at the Wildlife Conservation Society, in a recent paper.

So for those who keep trying to make the connection, it has little, if anything, to do with US politics. Meanwhile, I had no idea that cattle smuggling was a money-laundering route for drug cartels. TIL!

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#175

Post by delfinom »

Pxtl wrote: post #79

This was literally one of the first North American disasters I saw predicted as falling out of the Doge cuts.

This predates the DOGE cuts. During COVID and afterwards smuggling of cattle across from South America into Central America basically went full tilt and is considered the reason why the program collapsed.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#176

Post by stretchwithme »

GeekyBear wrote: post #172
ajmurmann wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it "used to be"? I've heard about the program before and thought it was incredible. What happened to it? Edit: Brief research tells me the screwworms broke though to Mexico in November 2024 after cases started increasing north of the Darian Gap throughout 2023 ( https://www.aphis.usda.gov/news/program-update/new-world-scr... ). It does seem like the funding now is happening through USDA rather than USAID ( htt…

> Why is it "used to be"? > Decades ago, screwworms were endemic throughout Central America and the southern US. However, governments across the regions used intensive, coordinated control efforts to push the flies southward. Screwworms were eliminated from the US around 1966, and were pushed downward through Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s. They were eventually declared eliminated from Panama in 2006, with the populat…

Considering the widths of Panama and Mexico, holding them south of Panama had to be much cheaper.

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#177

Post by stretchwithme »

jfengel wrote: post #27
ajmurmann wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it "used to be"? I've heard about the program before and thought it was incredible. What happened to it? Edit: Brief research tells me the screwworms broke though to Mexico in November 2024 after cases started increasing north of the Darian Gap throughout 2023 ( https://www.aphis.usda.gov/news/program-update/new-world-scr... ). It does seem like the funding now is happening through USDA rather than USAID ( htt…

Yeah, it got cut back in March. https://kbhbradio.com/usda-cuts-budget-staff-for-animal-dise... Part of it was restored a couple of months later.

The flies didn't JUST start moving north this year.

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#178

Post by db48x »

Eextra953 wrote: post #145
db48x wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “cure” is an unceasing war. Then COVID hit and the war ceased for a few months.

So with pests and viruses there is no real eradication? Do they really require an unceasing war to reign them in? I have no knowledge of this field - just curious.

It depends on the pest. Some of them are easier to eliminate than others. With screwworm flies the only offense we have is to raise them by the billions, sterilize them with radiation, chill them down, and then drop them out of airplanes. Fertile females end up mating with sterile males and then cannot lay any eggs before they die. Each generation then becomes radically smaller than the previous. Since their lifecycle is only a few weeks long this eliminates them in a few months. They were able to successfully eradicate the screwworm fly from North and Central America, but a combination of expense and diplomatic entanglements prevented them from continuing south past Panama. There have been outbreaks before, most notably in Egypt (or maybe just northern Africa, I forget) a few decades ago.

We have different responses to other pests. For example, Florida maintains a mosquito control program that sprays vast swathes of the state with insecticide from both the ground and the air every 7 days. I imagine that other southern states do as well.

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#179

Post by stretchwithme »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #89
tptacek wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's true, but the point the parent commenter was making is that recent previous administrations also didn't take this problem seriously.

Who was president in 2020 again?

I see you are bias-free.

Re: Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread

#180

Post by hombre_fatal »

echelon wrote: post #167
croes wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the edit of parent. And I wrote „just nature“ because parent used it’s nature as a justification. Hence the moral part.

We evolved to eat. We did not evolve to rape. Eating, fundamentally, reduces some other organism's population. All of nature does it. We consume life and the byproducts of life. Even the high energy gas exchange we rely upon is 100% a waste product that we consume. Life is fundamentally about consuming and repurposing the materials of others. You don't need to have sex. You need to eat to survive. Our bodies are natu…

None of that really matters if you just care about nutrition or sentient beings without the story telling.
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