{"id":428825,"date":"2026-09-07T15:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T15:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/428825\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T15:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T15:36:09","slug":"usda-releases-billionth-sterile-fly-in-texas-screwworm-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/428825\/","title":{"rendered":"USDA releases billionth sterile fly in Texas screwworm fight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">ABILENE-SWEETWATER, Texas (CNN) \u2014 The U.S. government has released its billionth sterile fly into Texas to fight the New World screwworm.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The pest lays eggs on warm-blooded animals, leading to dangerous infections.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Decades ago, the screwworm was eradicated by the creation and release of sterile flies to interrupt the pest\u2019s breeding cycle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">In June, the USDA reported its first U.S. cases in years.<\/p>\n<p>Federal response<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">While scientists have worried the threat could grow, the Trump administration says it is working to ramp up sterile fly production.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">So far, less than 50 screwworm cases have been recorded in the U.S. this year.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ABILENE-SWEETWATER, Texas (CNN) \u2014 The U.S. government has released its billionth sterile fly into Texas to fight the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[115446,5877,148983,27,29,28,148984,5876],"class_list":["post-428825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-flesh-eating-parasite","tag-new-world-screwworm","tag-sterile-fly-release","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-screwworm-cases","tag-usda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428825","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=428825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}