US$750M Texas screwworm facility to open seven months ahead of schedule

USA – The United States’ US$750 million sterile fly production facility being built in southern Texas to combat the devastating New World screwworm (NWS) is now set to open seven months ahead of schedule, accelerating efforts to protect the country’s livestock industry from one of its most destructive animal pests.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the revised timeline during a visit to the Moore Air Base construction site in Edinburg, Texas, where officials reviewed progress on the new production facility.

The project, first announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2025, is a cornerstone of the country’s strategy to prevent the parasite from spreading northwards from Mexico into U.S. livestock-producing regions.

Located approximately 20 miles from the Mexican border, the facility will initially produce 100 million sterile screwworm flies per week, with capacity expected to increase to 300 million flies weekly once fully operational.

“We will reach the initial operating capacity of 100 million sterile flies per week,” Rollins said. 

“We’ll reach that capacity by the end of next year or early the next.”

She added that construction was progressing significantly faster than anticipated.

“We are way ahead of schedule on the actual fly facility. We have a brand new opening date, which is months ahead of schedule, years ahead of where any other administration would likely be, but months ahead of where even we had hoped to be,” Rollins said.

The sterile insects will be released into affected areas, where they mate with wild female screwworm flies, preventing reproduction and gradually suppressing pest populations.

The New World screwworm is one of the livestock industry’s most feared parasites. 

Unlike ordinary fly larvae that feed on dead tissue, screwworm maggots consume living flesh, causing severe wounds that can lead to death if untreated. 

The pest affects cattle, sheep, goats, horses, wildlife and occasionally humans, making rapid detection and control essential.

US deploys AI drones to detect infected cattle

Alongside the accelerated construction of the sterile fly facility, the USDA has announced a new surveillance programme using artificial intelligence-powered drones to identify animals infected with the New World screwworm.

The initiative follows an agreement between the USDA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), allowing USDA to use CBP drones equipped with thermal imaging and AI technology to detect potentially infected livestock and wildlife.

“If the drones are seeing a herd of white-tailed deer, they can spot the deer, and then that technology can zero in on it if there is one or two that have a higher temperature than the others; there is a good chance they have a New World screwworm,” Rollins said.

Once infected animals are identified, sterile flies can be released quickly into the affected area to interrupt the pest’s life cycle. 

Federal officials also said the drones will help identify the illegal movement of livestock, another pathway through which the parasite could spread.

So far, officials have confirmed one New World screwworm case in the Rio Grande Valley, involving a calf in Starr County last month.

USDA says combining early detection with expanded sterile fly production will strengthen national biosecurity and reduce the threat to the U.S. livestock sector.

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