US, Mexico inaugurate sterile fly plant in Chiapas in cross-border screwworm fight
Source: msn/Reuters
11h
METAPA, Mexico June 27 - Senior Mexican and U.S. officials inaugurated a sterile fly production plant in southern Chiapas on Saturday, a milestone in efforts to contain the New World screwworm outbreak as it has spread across borders and disrupted cattle trade.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins attended the opening of the facility in Metapa de Dominguez, near the Guatemala border. The plant, a U.S.-Mexico project costing over $50 million, will eventually produce up to 100 million sterile flies weekly to suppress the wild screwworm population.
The parasite burrows into the flesh of warm-blooded animals and can be fatal if untreated. Even with the new capacity, experts have said the total supply of sterile flies will fall short of what is needed to eradicate the pest.
The facility’s launch comes more than 18 months after Mexico confirmed its first screwworm case in November 2024. The outbreak then advanced northward through Mexico and eventually into the U.S., where the first cases in decades were confirmed in early June in Texas. Those cases have heightened concerns about the risk to the U.S. cattle industry.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-mexico-inaugurate-sterile-fly-plant-in-chiapas-in-cross-border-screwworm-fight/ar-AA26HvkN