WASHINGTON \u2014 At a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing earlier this month, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was resolute \u2014 her agency was well-prepared for the New World screwworm, and had kept it at bay for months before the first case was confirmed in a South Texas calf in early June.<\/p>\n
As senators asked whether the U.S. Department of Agriculture needed further resources to combat the parasitic fly and if 2025 department cuts had had any impact on the government\u2019s capacity to prepare, Rollins maintained that the federal government, from the White House down, was bought in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI walked in the Oval Office and I said sir, there is a pretty serious threat to our livestock that\u2019s headed our way, and when we need 500 million sterile flies per week, we\u2019re only producing 100 million out of Panama, because everyone took their eye off the ball years ago,\u201d Rollins said, describing a conversation with President Donald Trump in the spring of 2025. \u201cAnd unfortunately, because of the border policies, it\u2019s coming our way. And he said, \u2018Well, what do you need?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
What Rollins got was $1.3 billion in emergency funding to tackle New World screwworm, which she said has allowed USDA to move quickly to expand its capacity to tackle the problem. <\/p>\n
But as the flesh-eating parasite moves into Texas \u2014 leaving the state\u2019s massive livestock industry and the health of thousands of cattle herds hanging in the balance \u2014 stakeholders on both sides of the aisle agree that the country is not producing enough sterile flies to combat the problem. Experts project that 500 to 700 million sterile flies are needed weekly to eradicate the pest, and at the moment, the U.S. government is producing about 100 million every seven days out of a facility in Panama.<\/p>\n
That capacity is set to expand, but not enough to reach the 500 million threshold. And other technologies officials hope to pair with fly sterilization are not yet ready to be deployed or are the subject of disagreement, leaving the Trump administration and Texas officials without a speedy path to eradicate the threat.<\/p>\n
This reality has set off a blame game in which leaders of both political parties are trying to unpack who\u2019s at fault for the lack of capacity. To Rollins, it\u2019s on the Biden administration for not prioritizing the screwworm enough and for its more permissive border policies, which she says allowed the pest to travel north through illicit cattle traffic. Democrats have decried her explanation, pointing to DOGE cuts<\/a> in early 2025, including a significant reduction in USDA staff, as having hampered the agency\u2019s efforts to combat the fly.<\/p>\n Rollins\u2019 agency has also received criticism from Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller<\/a>, an outgoing Republican, who says the department is focusing on the wrong technology and disregarding his calls to fight the screwworm with an insecticide bait system.<\/p>\n While sterilization is a proven pest control method \u2014 releasing sterilized male flies to mate with female flies and produce unfertilized eggs, eventually eliminating the population \u2014 some observers view it as a necessity to bring in other technologies while the sterilization effort ramps up.<\/p>\n Currently, the U.S. government is producing about 100 million sterile flies per week out of a facility in Panama. Another facility in Metapa, Mexico is expected to come online at the end of the week, bringing, at the apex of its capacity, 100 million more flies. But it will take time to build up to that figure. USDA officials testified that by the end of July, they expect to produce about 9 million flies per week at the facility. <\/p>\n A domestic facility at Moore Air Base in Edinburg, projected to come online in late 2027, should bring another 100 million when it opens, with an eventual capacity of 300 million sterile flies per week.<\/p>\n As the government races to produce more sterile flies and bring new facilities and technologies online, lawmakers, state officials and ranchers alike are evaluating USDA\u2019s response and seeking more information about its preparation, including how willing it is to embrace other tactics.<\/p>\n \u201cThe screwworm didn\u2019t get here in an hour,\u201d Dudley Hoskins, the USDA undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, said at a Texas House hearing last week. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to be able to push it back south until we get \u2026 500 million sterile flies. It will just take time. It\u2019ll take vigilance. It\u2019ll take responsiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n How USDA responded<\/p>\n The New World screwworm has been on agriculture officials\u2019 radar for years, from when the pest breached the Darien Gap in 2023 to when it first appeared in Mexico in late 2024, triggering the Biden administration to suspend live animal imports from the country.<\/p>\n The Trump administration reopened the ports to livestock trade in February 2025, under pressure to bring down beef prices, but shut them down again in May 2025 over screwworm fears.<\/p>\n When Rollins was sworn in as secretary, she said she received a briefing on the screwworm threat within her first two hours on the job, and was told that the fly was expected to reach the U.S. in the summer of 2025. <\/p>\n Early last year, the Trump administration slashed the federal workforce, including at the Department of Agriculture, which lost 20% of its staff. But Rollins has said the staffing cuts had no impact on screwworm response. There were 10 full-time staffers dedicated to screwworm at the onset of the second Trump administration, she said, while there are now more than 120. <\/p>\n \u201cThe idea that DOGE caused this could not be further from the truth,\u201d Rollins said at a recent news conference. \u201cWhat we did was reallocate resources and prioritize what matters, ensuring taxpayer dollars are used effectively while leaning in aggressively on preparedness.\u201d <\/p>\n In August 2025, Rollins announced a five-part plan to combat screwworm \u2014 develop new technologies to accelerate sterile fly production, construct a sterile fly production facility at Moore Air Force Base in Edinburg, ramp up detection and surveillance, collaborate with Mexico and ensure food safety.<\/p>\n Since then, the USDA has broken ground on the $750 million Edinburg facility \u2014 expected to come online in late 2027 \u2014 and invested in the facility in Metapa, Mexico, to increase its sterile fly production capacity.<\/p>\n Rollins has pushed officials to expedite the timeline on the Edinburg facility, but Hoskins said he doesn\u2019t know yet whether it will open before its current projection of November 2027. USDA officials have testified that the process for bringing new facilities online and for dropping flies has gone faster than initially projected.<\/p>\n USDA also does major surveillance and trapping operations along the border and launched a $100 million New World screwworm grant challenge to invest in creative ideas and technologies, and awarded<\/a> grants from the fund earlier this month, including new trapping technologies and an effort to develop male sterile flies with a hyperactive sex drive.<\/p>\n Rollins and her team have maintained that their actions to this point had delayed the onset of the screwworm for months, given that USDA modeling suggested it would arrive last summer.<\/p>\n Much of the frustration around the response is centered around the gap between how many sterile flies the U.S. is producing and how many it needs.<\/p>\n Rep. Vicente Gonzalez<\/a>, D-McAllen, voiced that very concern after visiting a USDA research facility in Kerrville in the spring of 2025 with farmers and ranchers from his district. He said he told Rollins at the Edinburg facility groundbreaking that the region would not be able to build new facilities fast enough, and should be opening pop-up sterile fly production centers and micro-facilities. Gonzalez offered a few empty facilities he knew of that he said could be quickly repurposed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do it for so many other reasons \u2014 when we go to war, when we\u2019re holding migrants, all different reasons,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cWe can definitely do it to expedite the production of sterile flies to stop the further migration of the screwworm that can have a devastating impact on the industry, on wildlife, and on the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n But he\u2019s concerned about a lack of communication between the experts on the ground and the administration. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very slow, bureaucratic process in trying to combat this,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cThey\u2019ve fumbled the ball in a major way.\u201d<\/p>\n On the congressional side, both parties agree it\u2019s not a question of resources. Rollins told the Senate committee that there were no additional authorities that her department needed to combat screwworm.<\/p>\n Texas Democrats in Congress want answers from Rollins on a number of inquiries related to USDA\u2019s 2025 staff and program cuts to ascertain whether DOGE \u2014 Trump\u2019s Elon Musk-helmed effort to downsize the federal government \u2014 contributed to the outbreak. All 13 Democrats in the state\u2019s delegation, led by Rep. Lizzie Fletcher<\/a>, D-Houston, sent a letter<\/a> to Rollins last week requesting a briefing.<\/p>\n Other tech options<\/p>\n Stakeholders also want to know about USDA\u2019s ability to bring new technologies to the fight. The most promising one is Novofly, a genetically engineered solution to only produce male flies. Successful Novofly adoption would significantly reduce the number of sterile flies required per week, given that the female ones currently produced in labs are not useful in the field. <\/p>\n USDA officials testified that the research stage of the Novofly project is complete, and that it\u2019s being operationally field tested but is a ways off from being deployed at the facilities producing sterile flies.<\/p>\n