President Donald Trump's administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to take up Bayer’s bid to curtail thousands of lawsuits claiming its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer.
USDA to Spend $750 Million on Texas Fly Facility to Combat Screwworm
Reuters’ Tom Polansek and Leah Douglas reported that “the U.S. Department of Agriculture will spend up to $750 million to build a facility in Texas that produces sterile flies to fight the flesh-eating livestock pest New World screwworm, Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Friday.”
“The plan signals increasing worries about the risk of screwworm, a parasitic fly that eats livestock and wildlife alive, to infest U.S. cattle after the pest moved north in Mexico toward the U.S. border,” Polansek and Douglas reported. “An outbreak could further elevate record-high U.S. beef prices by reducing the U.S. cattle supply. ‘It could truly crush the cattle industry,’ Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at a news conference with Rollins.”
“The production plant in Edinburg, Texas, would be located with a previously announced sterile fly dispersal facility at Moore Air Base and be able to produce 300 million sterile screwworm flies per week, Rollins said. Sterile flies reduce the mating population of the wild flies,” Polansek and Douglas reported. “Rollins did not say when the plant would open but previously said such a facility would take two to three years to build. The USDA will spend another $100 million on technologies to combat screwworm while the facility is being constructed and hire more mounted officers to patrol the border for infested wildlife, Rollins said.”
Agri-Pulse’s Philip Brasher reported that Rollins acknowledged “that beef prices could continue to rise amid the suspension of Mexican cattle imports. Speaking at a news conference at the Texas Capitol with Gov. Greg Abbott, Rollins said the border wouldn’t be reopened until she received assurances that the outbreak of the flesh-eating pest in Mexico is under control.”
“‘We’ve got a lot of work to do, but we have to protect our cattle industry and our beef industry in this country, and in so doing protect our food supply, and in so doing protect our national security for America,’ Rollins said,” according to Brasher’s reporting. “‘Do we expect beef prices to continue to rise, perhaps, but the safety and the security of our beef and our ranchers has to be at the top of the list.'”
“Rollins also said Mexico has agreed to ‘halt animal movement in infected zones, which will help push screwworm back towards Darien Gap [the border area between Panama and Colombia] and away from our doorstep,'” Brasher reported.
USDA Also Ramping Up Border Defense
Successful Farming’s Mariah Squire reported that “to combat the migration of infected wildlife across the U.S. border, the agency is ‘ramping up the hiring of USDA employed mounted patrol officers known as the Tick Riders,’ according to Rollins. They will be the ‘cornerstone of our surveillance program,’ she said.”
I’m in Texas today as we continue to aggressively address the serious New World Screwworm threat endangering our American livestock industry and our nation’s national security. @USDA is announcing a historic investment to STOP screwworm in its tracks — with 5 pillars of action:… pic.twitter.com/ukcWSSamcZ
— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) August 15, 2025
“Traditionally, the patrol group’s mission has been to protect U.S. cattle from the cattle fever tick, according to the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS),” Squire reported. “‘The Tick Riders are mounted on horseback and will provide the first line of defense against a New World Screwworm outbreak along the U.S.-Mexico border,’ Rollins said. Rollins said the beagles of APHIS’ Beagle Brigade are also being trained to detect screwworm infections.”
How Releasing Sterile Flies Helps Combat Screwworm
The Associated Press’ John Hanna reported that New World screwworm “was a problem for the American cattle industry for decades until the U.S. largely eradicated it in the 1970s by breeding and releasing sterile male flies to breed with wild females. It shut down fly factories on U.S. soil afterward.”
“The new fly-breeding factory in Texas would be the first on U.S. soil in decades and represents a ramping up of the USDA’s spending on breeding and releasing sterile New World screwworm flies,” Hanna reported. “The sterile males are released in large enough numbers that wild females can’t help but mate with them, producing sterile eggs that don’t hatch. Eventually, the wild fly population shrinks away because females mate only once in their weekslong lives.”
