{"id":325945,"date":"2026-06-06T21:45:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T21:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/325945\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T21:45:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T21:45:15","slug":"a-second-cow-in-texas-has-been-found-infected-with-screwworm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/325945\/","title":{"rendered":"A second cow in Texas has been found infected with screwworm"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has detected the second incident of a\u00a0New World screwworm<\/a> infecting a calf in southwest Texas – approximately 5.6 miles from the first case.<\/p>\n

On Friday, a federal government response team posted on social media that the new case was in a 1-month-old calf in Zavala County.<\/p>\n

“An APHIS Strike Team is on-site, we have deployed mobile response trailers, and sterile fly releases are underway,” the New World\u00a0Screwworm Rapid Response group said. “We have defeated this pest before, and we will do it again.”<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, the flesh-eating larvae was discovered for the first time in the U.S. in a calf in South Texas. Screwworm flies pose a threat to the state’s $17 billion cattle industry, but can also spread to any warm-blooded animals, including wildlife and pets.<\/p>\n

LEARN MORE: Greg Abbott pledges state resources to fight spread of ‘extraordinarily challenging’ screwworm flies<\/a><\/p>\n

The federal response team said it has already acted to control the movement of cattle where the infected calf was found and is providing treatment supplies. The team said it also is releasing sterile flies – 2 million by air and 4 million on the ground per week – to ensure the\u00a0screwworm flies only encounter sterile mates and do\u00a0not reproduce.<\/p>\n

Federal and state officials, as well as cattle industry leaders, have been sounding the alarm<\/a> about the fly’s movement through Mexico and toward the U.S. since a case was confirmed in southern Mexico in November 2024.<\/p>\n

As of Wednesday,\u00a0more than 171,700\u00a0cases<\/a> were reported in animals outside of the country, and more than 2,070 cases in people.<\/p>\n

Gov. Greg Abbott\u00a0issued a disaster declaration<\/a> last year about the bug. He expanded it Friday to authorize “all available resources of state government to respond to this disaster.”<\/p>\n

Subscribe<\/p>\n

There’s more to Houston with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25\u00a2.<\/a><\/p>\n

This article originally published at A second cow in Texas has been found infected with screwworm<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. Department of Agriculture has detected the second incident of a\u00a0New World screwworm infecting a calf in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[392,5878,27,29,28,5699,115405,75216],"class_list":["post-325945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-greg-abbott","tag-screwworm-flies","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-u-s-department-of-agriculture","tag-warm-blooded-animals","tag-zavala-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}