Texas is escalating its fight against a parasite that had not threatened American livestock in decades. According to Fox 26, Governor Greg Abbott has activated the state's emergency operations center in response to a growing outbreak of the New World screwworm, a flesh-eating pest now spreading across parts of the country.
The scale of the outbreak has expanded beyond a single case. Officials say there are now cases in the United States, with 18 in Texas and one in New Mexico, a jump that has turned an early detection into a wider problem demanding a coordinated state response.
Alongside the emergency activation, authorities are trying to limit how the parasite travels. Abbott has expanded animal movement quarantines across vulnerable areas, restricting the transport of animals that could carry the screwworm into new regions and accelerate its spread.
To beat back the pest, officials are turning to a proven approach. They say they are looking at the playbook that helped wipe out the screwworm decades ago, a campaign that succeeded in eradicating the parasite from the United States after years of effort.
At the heart of that strategy is an unusual weapon. The approach uses sterile male flies to stop the flesh-eating parasite from reproducing, flooding the population with insects that cannot produce offspring and gradually collapsing the pest's ability to spread.
For now, officials are watching to see whether the measures take hold. Authorities are hoping the combination of quarantines and the sterile fly program will slow the outbreak, in a situation that has raised serious concern for a cattle industry already under pressure.