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A sterile fly facility is set to open in Texas this spring amid a New World Screwworm (NWS) outbreak that has affected two states, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced Monday.
The USDA social media account dedicated to providing updates on the federal response to the NWS spread said the facility will open seven months ahead of schedule at the Moore Air Base in Edinburg, Texas.
Rollins told lawmakers in June that construction of this facility broke ground in April and was “moving at Trump [administration] speed” to be “operational by the end of next year.”
Once the plant hits full capacity, which is expected by late 2028, it will aim to produce 300 million sterile flies per week. The sterile insect technique (SIT) is a proven, natural way to counteract screwworm outbreaks.
SIT involves introducing sterilized flies into an environment to mate with NWS-infected flies and prevent them from successfully reproducing and spreading this parasite.
The Texas operation will work jointly with similar facilities already in production in Panama and Mexico to counteract the spread of NWS. The Moore Air Base facility is located around 20 miles from the Texas-Mexico border.
In June, the USDA announced the first case of NWS in a bovine in Texas, setting off urgent calls from state officials and U.S. lawmakers to stop the spread of the parasite.
The department has tracked a total of 45 domestic cases across Texas and New Mexico. Four of these cases are still active, according to a Monday update to the USDA’s webpage tracking this outbreak.
Texas’s Crockett County has seen the highest NWS incident rate, with 11 reported cases since June. The county is located in the western region of the state and had a population of just over 3,000 in the 2020 census.
In addition to the screwworm facility, on Friday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization for a wound spray called “CLiK Extra” that can help treat animals infected with NWS.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller praised the Trump administration for this emergency approval. The state official had previously criticized the federal government’s response to this outbreak as “slow, bureaucratic, and incomplete.”
While Miller called CLiK Extra’s approval an “important victory,” he emphasized that this “must be matched by an all-out eradication campaign that pushes the screwworm back across the border and keeps it there.”
“I also urge the federal government to fully embrace the aggressive eradication strategy this crisis demands,” Miller said in a statement. “Texas producers deserve nothing less than a comprehensive plan that doesn’t just slow the screwworm, it defeats it once and for all.”
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