Texas governor wants to speed up work on a fly-breeding factory to fight a cattle parasite [View all]
Source: AP
By JOHN HANNA
Updated 4:21 PM CDT, June 5, 2026
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott expressed concern Friday that a new factory isn’t expected to start breeding sterile New World screwworm flies for more than a year as a big part of the effort to stop its flesh-eating larvae from threatening the $113 U.S. billion cattle industry.
Abbott pledged Texas will help the U.S. Department of Agriculture accelerate construction of the $750 million breeding facility outside Edinburg, Texas, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of the U.S.-Mexico border. He said Texas is willing to spend its own funds to see that construction is “24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Without greater sterile fly production, Abbott said during a news conference in the state capital of Austin, “We cannot make it through a second summer.”
The USDA confirmed an infestation of New World screwworm fly larvae this week in a 3-week-old calf in La Pryor, Texas, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southwest of San Antonio and 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the Mexico border. It’s the first case confirmed in Texas since 1966.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/screwworm-flesh-eating-parasite-cattle-texas-abbott-fe0ee5f6e04a97b447d79542a0d31a04
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