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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

#201

Post by thfuran »

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.

Rinderpest (a cattle disease) and Smallpox are the only two diseases ever successfully eradicated. The smallpox vaccine was the first vaccine ever invented and it took until 1980, about 180 years later, to eradicate the disease entirely. It pretty much is an unceasing war, though Guinea worm and polio are also relatively close to being eradicated. But if you stop fighting them, they'll just spread again.

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

#202

Post by DangitBobby »

bryant wrote: post #138
nnutter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate you citing the USAID funding but you seem to be trying to prove a point rather than get to the truth. Screwworm detection and prevention was not halted because of the USAID shutdown, USDA is actively working on it, one can see this by going to usda.gov and searching for "screwworm". I really appreciate ajmurmann's edit which acknowledges this.

https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/22636-bird-flu-screwworm... > Among the GHS projects killed were some dedicated to *monitoring and containing avian flu and New World Screwworm in Central America, monitoring* avian flu outbreaks in Asia and improving the detection of new strains, and efforts to combat swine fever, according to a person familiar with the situation granted anonymity to speak frankly. you might not h…

This was downvoted because...?

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

#203

Post by bloomingeek »

timr wrote: post #174
throwup238 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 smuggle…

> So for those who keep trying to make the connection, it has little, if anything, to do with US politics.

Right now, as the world turns, we have the greatest number of appointees in positions of governmental influence on policies, that have no idea what they are doing because of a lack of expertise. Almost all these vital positions are politically appointed by the current administration. Need an example: soon the policies of JFK jr., God help us, are going to, unfortunately, prove my point.

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

#204

Post by wonderwonder »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #198
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is complex and interdependent. The US, being a powerful and influential country, has direct or indirect involvement in pretty much everything. That doesn't mean we are to blame for everything.

I agree. We certainly aren't at fault for the existence of organized crime in general . However our aggressively exported drug policy is very obviously the root that props up the Mexican and South American drug cartels (among others). There's decades of academic literature and economic analysis on this point. When a parasite is spreading due to a large scale money laundering tactic by a large scale criminal enterpris…

Good thing we are considering approving military force against the cartels. Optimally those large scale criminal enterprises will soon find themselves to be of much smaller scale after we start drone striking them. The cartels are already being hurt by the increased security along our southern borders as well as the large crackdown from Mexican authorities as they seek to appease Trump.

Incredible that we could have been doing this the whole time, we just chose not to. We just chose to allow the cartels to act in whatever way they saw fit and to cross our border with their poison and violence whenever they wanted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/world/americas/mexico-car...

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

#205

Post by duskwuff »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #42

> This is maintained with stringent animal movement controls, surveillance, trapping, and following the proven science to push the NWS barrier south in phases as quickly as possible. Why add "proven" before science? Nobody expects the USDA to handle such problems with "unproven science", for whatever it could be. For decades they've made the sterilized flies by exposing them to gamma radiation that damages their repr…

> Why add "proven" before science?

I'm pretty sure it's a political thing, and is meant to be read as "don't worry, we aren't using any problematic science like mRNA vaccines".

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

#206

Post by Hikikomori »

wonderwonder wrote: post #204
fc417fc802 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. We certainly aren't at fault for the existence of organized crime in general . However our aggressively exported drug policy is very obviously the root that props up the Mexican and South American drug cartels (among others). There's decades of academic literature and economic analysis on this point. When a parasite is spreading due to a large scale money laundering tactic by a large scale criminal enterpris…

Good thing we are considering approving military force against the cartels. Optimally those large scale criminal enterprises will soon find themselves to be of much smaller scale after we start drone striking them. The cartels are already being hurt by the increased security along our southern borders as well as the large crackdown from Mexican authorities as they seek to appease Trump. Incredible that we could have…

Is there a problem America can't solve with guns?

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

#207

Post by wonderwonder »

Hikikomori wrote: post #206
wonderwonder wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing we are considering approving military force against the cartels. Optimally those large scale criminal enterprises will soon find themselves to be of much smaller scale after we start drone striking them. The cartels are already being hurt by the increased security along our southern borders as well as the large crackdown from Mexican authorities as they seek to appease Trump. Incredible that we could have…

Is there a problem America can't solve with guns?

I mean taken to its furthest extreme, not really.

America owes its dominance to two things: Guns and Money

And the second is very much dependent on the first.

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

#208

Post by rcpt »

alephnerd wrote: post #134
rcpt wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lina Khan was in power for years and didn't do anything about this. Closest thing was a case where she blocked Sanderson Farms from being acquired but that was poultry.

She was starting to concentrate on the Ag consolidation [0] but my interpretation is she targeted tech first due to the industry's somewhat weaker political position in both admins. She also didn't touch Comcast - and they are the kingmakers in PA and DE. [0] - https://www.law.nyu.edu/news/katzmann-lecture-lina-khan-talk...

Yes going after tech is the populist thing to do and she did that.

As usual Comcast never gets touched and farm owners might as well write the laws themselves.

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

#209

Post by hedora »

b112 wrote: post #171
chris_wot wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abso…

They cut funding in March in the middle of it beginning to spread north, and the spread has continued uncontrolled in the months since then.

The DOGE cuts directly worsened the current situation. It’s unclear if the initial covid era cuts were performed by Biden or Trump (I can’t find a date or primary source for those).

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

#210

Post by amoshebb »

throwup238 wrote: post #50
amoshebb wrote: post #37

Some folks are posting about the regular flights over Panama, and I’ve seen talk about ending screwworm with a “gene drive”, but I also feel that it doesn’t feel necessary. But a third option I don’t see talked about a lot: finish the job. We could drop sterile flies all over the USA and Mexico all the way into panama with 1950s tech. We have drones now, surely some inexpensive paper planes shoved out of the back of…

There is no finishing the job. Screwworm flies have tons of reservoirs in the jungles of Central America that aren’t practical to eliminate for logistical and ecological reasons. We can only control the population in agriculturally important areas by constantly releasing the sterile male flies every year. Whenever we stop the releases, the flies bounce back in a few years.

See I guess I find broadside “impractical” dissatisfying.

Could a few cargo ships be converted into floating fly farm aircraft carriers on either coast, maybe another in the amazon, and then just use a hundred reaper drone type things to do a creeping barrage? This must be within the budget of even a modest nation state.

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