The federal government is going to take millions of sterile flies and dump them on Texas in the hopes that they’ll kill off a species of insect known for laying its flesh-eating larvae in the wounds of warm-blooded animals.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced an upcoming project where it will reportedly breed millions of flies, blast them with radiation to make them sterile and unleash them on Texas and Mexico in hopes of reducing the population of the New World Screwworm and its flesh-eating maggot larvae.
The sterile, irradiated male flies will be released in hopes that they’ll mate with wild female screwworm flies. The hope is that the female flies will produce unfertilized eggs that don’t hatch, ultimately reducing the number of screwworm larvae.
The end goal is to see the screwworm population die out in the region.
The New World Screwworm Fly is primarily found in forests and wooded areas, but also seeks hosts, including cattle and horses.
Females will typically lay their eggs in the open wounds of live, warm-blooded animals. The maggots, once hatched, burrow into the flesh of the host. Their presence in the wound can potentially kill the host animal.
The flies burrow into the bodies of their hosts in a screw-like fashion, hence their name.
The flies — which are endemic to Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and some South American countries — were thought to have been wiped out in the U.S. as far back as 1966.
The screwworm can infest humans. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised that individuals in the affected areas who “spend time among livestock animals, sleep outdoors and have an open wound are at greater risk of becoming infested with [New World Screwworms].”
Because of the fly’s infestation method, individuals who have recently had surgery are at a higher risk of infestation “as the flies will lay eggs on open sores,” the CDC warned.
Unfortunately, the screwworm flies have recently reemerged in Texas, following an outbreak in Mexico. That became public in May, prompting the USDA to temporarily suspend live cattle, horse, and bison imports across the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent further spread.
The U.S. used the sterile fly method to nearly eliminate the screwworm flies between 1962 and 1975. In the decade before the fly program began, the USDA estimated that livestock producers in the Southwest U.S. lost approximately $50 million to $100 million annually as a result of the fly.
To facilitate the new version of the fly program, a factory aimed at breeding and producing sterile flies will open in southern Mexico in July of next year. After that, a fly distribution center will be opened in southern Texas to import and distribute the sterile flies throughout the Southwest.
