Following the \u2060first confirmation of screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite, on a US farm in decades, federal and state officials have fanned out in South Texas, where a calf was found infested this week.<\/p>\n
US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Thursday no other infestations of cattle or other animals have been detected around the confirmed case.<\/p>\n
The case in La Pryor, Texas, was a blow to US cattle ranchers who have been bracing for a domestic outbreak of New World screwworm as the fly advanced north through \u200cMexico over the past year.<\/p>\n
The US Department of Agriculture broke ground in April on a facility to produce sterile flies, which experts describe as the best tool for combating the pest, but it will not come online until late 2027.<\/p>\n
The federal agency and Texas officials quickly halted the movement of animals in a 20-km (12.4-mile) area around the case and took other steps to prevent the parasite from spreading.<\/p>\n
Now, every major road out of La Pryor, Texas, is marked with a blinking orange road sign urging all vehicles carrying livestock to pull over to a checkpoint staffed with sheriffs and state personnel who inspect the animals for signs of screwworm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the \u2060first confirmation of screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite, on a US farm in decades, federal and state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,23883,142932,144,2808,297896,147622,297895,26,72189,3,29581,1022,117481,21,19,22,20,25,143507,24,12839],"class_list":["post-685225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-brooke-rollins","tag-cargill","tag-china","tag-florida","tag-futuresone","tag-jbs","tag-la-pryor","tag-mexico","tag-new-world-screwworm","tag-news","tag-south-texas","tag-texas","tag-tyson-foods","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-department-of-agriculture","tag-usa","tag-usda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}