A three-week-old calf in La Pryor, Texas became the harbinger of an agricultural emergency when veterinarians confirmed it carried New World screwworm fly larvae—the first documented case in the state since 1966. Texas Governor Greg Abbott wasted no time, pledging state resources and round-the-clock construction work to accelerate a $750 million fly-breeding facility near Edinburg, just 20 miles from the Mexico border, a facility that federal officials say is essential to saving America's $113 billion cattle industry from a parasite that feeds on living tissue.
The stakes could hardly be higher. Within days of the first confirmed case, a second emerged in a one-month-old calf in Zavala County, only 5.6 miles away. Abbott warned plainly: without rapid production of sterile flies—the biological weapon against the screwworm—"We cannot make it through a second summer." Those are not the words of someone engaged in routine crisis management. They are the words of a governor watching a flesh-eating pest spread across his state's ranching heartland during peak season.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is racing on two fronts. The Texas facility, designed to be twice the size of a Costco store, is expected to produce up to 300 million sterile flies per week once operational. A second, smaller breeding operation in southern Mexico—which received $21 million in federal investment to convert from breeding fruit flies—is expected to start producing 100 million flies weekly next month. Both are needed, officials believe, to eradicate the fly from the United States, Mexico, and Central America.
Yet timing is the problem. The Texas factory is not scheduled to open until November 2027—more than a year away. Governor Abbott is determined to compress that timeline. He pledged Texas will fund accelerated construction running "24 hours a day, seven days a week," a commitment that reflects the genuine alarm rippling through cattle country. Rear Admiral Michael Schmoyer, a member of the USDA's screwworm response team, acknowledged the federal government has already cut planning and drafting timelines dramatically—shrinking what normally takes a year into just a few months. Even so, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the USDA hopes to start operations sooner than the planned November date.
The economic stakes extend beyond the immediate cattle threat. Beef prices are already at record highs due to a tight cattle supply, a situation that would worsen if ranchers are forced to restrict animal movement or if infestations reach concentrated feedlots. Yet officials emphasized there is no food safety risk—the fly larvae do not infest meat or fruit. Derrell Peel, an agribusiness professor at Oklahoma State University, expects the immediate impact to remain localized unless movement restrictions expand or infestations appear in high-density operations.
The screwworm's return to Texas comes after Mexican outbreaks that began in 2024 prompted the U.S. to close its cattle ports to Mexican imports in May 2025. What had been roughly 1.2 million head of cattle per year from Mexico dropped about 80 percent—a seismic shift in the continental supply chain.
Now Texas and the federal government are racing against both the calendar and the breeding cycle of a parasite that thrives in warm months. The outcome depends on whether a factory not yet completed can be built fast enough to save a summer.