Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread
usda.gov
usda.gov
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...
Archive link: https://archive.ph/3sD9d
Edit: Brief research tells me the screwworms broke though to Mexico in November 2024 after cases started increasing north of the Darian Gap throughout 2023 (https://www.aphis.usda.gov/news/program-update/new-world-scr...). It does seem like the funding now is happening through USDA rather than USAID (https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/cattle/...) and there likely was a funding gap. As much as I like to blame the current administration for defunding USAID the breakthrough happened earlier.
> Illegal cattle smuggling, long considered one of the most efficient money-laundering routes for the drug cartels which terrorised San Pedro Sula, is regarded as the main reason for the accelerating advance. Up to 800,000 cattle a year are illicitly raised in nature reserves, such as the UNESCO-protected Rio Platano Biosphere in Honduras, and then smuggled by boat and truck up to Mexico. The flies, of course, travel with the livestock, embedded in cattle hides, accelerating their advance.
> “Everything indicates that illegal cattle routes from Central America are the arteries through which the screw worm is circulating again toward Mexico,” wrote Jeremy Radachowsky, director for Mesoamerican and the Western Caribbean at the Wildlife Conservation Society, in a recent paper.
So for those who keep trying to make the connection, it has little, if anything, to do with US politics. Meanwhile, I had no idea that cattle smuggling was a money-laundering route for drug cartels. TIL!
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...
I follow your intended meaning (USAID & etc cuts). But taken literally it's US policies and propaganda that enable the drug cartels. Our dysfunctions are still ultimately the root of the problem.
When a parasite is spreading due to a large scale money laundering tactic by a large scale criminal enterprise whose scale is only enabled by our policy I class that as yet another own goal of the war on drugs.
These downstream effects are somewhat non obvious so I think it's worthwhile to point them out when they come up.
Incredible that we could have been doing this the whole time, we just chose not to. We just chose to allow the cartels to act in whatever way they saw fit and to cross our border with their poison and violence whenever they wanted.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/world/americas/mexico-car...
If they do so, what do you feel should be the correct response?
To me that reads as a convenient step by step guide to undermining our own freedoms while destabilizing our neighbors. Perhaps in turn you'll propose the solution of occupying Mexico to "maintain security"?
America has spent trillions on two failed wars in the past 25 years, and lacks the economic capability to produce artillery shells to aid Ukraine.
At the same time it needs to build up industrial capacity to defend against an impending war in the pacific and it doesn't seem to be able to do that.
It is unlikely that engaging in all out war with the cartels is a viable path at this time.
America owes its dominance to two things: Guns and Money
And the second is very much dependent on the first.
Right now, as the world turns, we have the greatest number of appointees in positions of governmental influence on policies, that have no idea what they are doing because of a lack of expertise. Almost all these vital positions are politically appointed by the current administration. Need an example: soon the policies of JFK jr., God help us, are going to, unfortunately, prove my point.
India has an equally large cattle industry that outproduces American dairy and cattle, yet their industry has a fraction of the carbon and methane impact as American dairy and cattle rearing [0] because the feed used in Indian industry is crop residue instead of industrialized meat+grain mixtures.
American Ag is hyperconsolidated into 3 processors [1] which makes it difficult for innovations to develop, whereas an equally large country like India has 228 local run dairy cooperatives and multiple private sector players each generating around $500M-2B in revenue.
Yet, the comments I'm seeing here on HN (and with those who I chatted with at the state level Dems) are reminiscent to those who blamed autoworkers and coalworkers for not learning to code back in 2014.
If someone like me who has been somewhat hesitant about Lina Khan until after getting deep into the dairy industry recently, I think HNers should recognize the value this train of thought can have in 2026 and 2028.
84% of Americans consume dairy or dairy alternative (still synthesized using dairy) products [2] - don't make this yet another culture war topic
[0] - https://www.thebullvine.com/dairy-industry/from-extinction-t...
[1] - https://www.thebullvine.com/news/will-your-dairy-farm-surviv...
[2] - https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/agriculture/our-insights...
That's a tad misleading. The statistics I could find only says that India outproduces the US in dairy, not beef. Rounding
>yet their industry has a fraction of the carbon and methane impact as American dairy and cattle rearing [0]
I did a cursory search in your source for "carbon" and "methane" and couldn't find anything to back this claim, only vague claims about how India does "Regenerative farming" and is therefore "low methane".
>because the feed used in Indian industry is crop residue instead of industrialized meat+grain mixtures.
That's not scalable and only works because the country is poor and beef/dairy consumption isn't high. There's no way you can supply American level demand for beef/dairy by only using crop residue.
>American Ag is hyperconsolidated into 3 processors which makes it difficult for innovations to develop, whereas an equally large country like India has 26 state run dairy cooperatives and multiple private sector players.
You can easily tell an opposite story about how consolidate companies have bigger budgets for R&D and capital projects, as opposed to 26 cooperatives each trying to implement some sort of strategy.
Anyone going "let's stop a thing today which will messes with a non-trivial fraction of our food production in a few years' time, without preparing either that food sector nor the dietary choices of the consumers before that happens" is definitely making a high-risk strategic choice.
70% of all processors in the dairy and cattle industry are now owned by 3 companies. Processors don't own cattle - they just process raw material like dairy and meat into cheese and pasteurized milk and handle the entire supply chain. But because they control the supply chain, distribution, and even the feed [0] used they can set rates and vendors used by farmers.
I posted an article about this earlier on HN, but it seems HNers like to talk about antitrust for search engines and not dairy and beef production.
Antitrust for me, oligopolic market forces for thee.
[0] - https://www.landolakesinc.com/what-we-do/animal-nutrition/
[1] - https://www.thebullvine.com/news/will-your-dairy-farm-surviv...
___________
To u/andrew_lettuce below:
Canada has the exact same issue of processor consolidation and oligopoly in agriculture as the US [0][1][2]
Arguably, it's worse than the US because this process started in the 1990s in Canada [3] versus the 2010s in the US.
[0] - https://ca.rbcwealthmanagement.com/terrence-galarneau/blog/4...
[1] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7350140/
[2] - https://financialpost.com/commodities/agriculture/why-only-t...
Ranchers that can support large herds (2,000+) are those who earn a net profit [0] and are consolidating because processors do not want to support small farms.
While environmental factors do play a role, saying it's the primary reason is greenwashing of the real oligopolies tendencies arising in American Ag industry.
[0] - https://www.thebullvine.com/news/will-your-dairy-farm-surviv...
"Here’s another force reshaping the industry that has nothing to do with immigration: processor consolidation. According to industry analysis, just three major cooperatives—Dairy Farmers of America, Land O’Lakes, and California Dairies—now handle over 80% of the nation’s milk marketing.
These processors need massive, consistent volumes. New processing plants require millions of pounds of milk per day to operate efficiently. From a logistical standpoint, it’s far more efficient to contract with a dozen 5,000-cow dairies than 500 smaller operations.
I was at a dairy conference in Wisconsin last year where a DFA representative candidly admitted: “We’re building plants that need 4-5 million pounds per day. We can’t deal with 200 small farms—we need 10 large ones.”
This “processor pull” creates powerful incentives for farm-level consolidation. I’ve seen it happen firsthand in regions where a new mega-processing plant opens—suddenly, there’s pressure on every farm in the area to either scale up or get squeezed out"
Also [1]
-----------
The fact that a country like India can support 228 milk cooperatives each generating around $500M-2B in revenue and outcompete American dairy+cattle in production and even reducing environmental impact with marginal subsidizes [2] means distribution+processing consolidation and it's side effects (cattle monoculture, non-competitive prices given to farmers, dairy processers NOW becoming animal feed manufacturers) are a good example of market failures due to oligopolic control.
No one at the WI and MI state Dem level is chatting about this based on some of my own meeting with them recently. This is the kind of swing vote topic that can flip all 3 branches of government in 26 and 28.
If someone like me who has been somewhat hesitant about Lina Khan until after getting deep into the dairy industry recently, I think HNers should recognize the opportunity this provides. 84% of Americans consume dairy and dairy products [3] - this is an easy win if some sympathy was provided.
Yet, the comments I'm seeing here on HN (and with those who I chatted with at the state level Dems) are reminiscent to those who blamed autoworkers and coalworkers for not learning to code back in 2014.
[0] - https://www.thebullvine.com/dairy-industry/dairys-great-cons...
[1] - https://www.thebullvine.com/news/will-your-dairy-farm-surviv...
[2] - https://www.thebullvine.com/dairy-industry/from-extinction-t...
[3] - https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/agriculture/our-insights...
It is mainstream economic and political opinion to regulate in some manner to reduce market consolidation since the 1940s with the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index.
or find other ways to reduce the influence of money on public elections -- see eg Prof. Lessig (of "Creative Commons" fame) and his writings on "Fix Congress First" which led to Rootstrikers.org
Closest thing was a case where she blocked Sanderson Farms from being acquired but that was poultry.
She also didn't touch Comcast - and they are the kingmakers in PA and DE.
[0] - https://www.law.nyu.edu/news/katzmann-lecture-lina-khan-talk...
As usual Comcast never gets touched and farm owners might as well write the laws themselves.
If you go to an ethnic store like Arabic halaal markets, ribeye steaks can be had for less than $10 a pound (but they’re ungraded). In one of the highest CoL areas in Southern California. Costco USDA Prime ribeyes are $20/pound and ribeye rounds are $25/pound.
We can also live in a cave, better for the environment.
But it can and does infect humans and other animals
But yes the current outbreak built up since COVID.
We're taking about Mexico to US trade here so the Mexico specific subprogram seems directly relevant.
> Decades ago, screwworms were endemic throughout Central America and the southern US. However, governments across the regions used intensive, coordinated control efforts to push the flies southward. Screwworms were eliminated from the US around 1966, and were pushed downward through Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s. They were eventually declared eliminated from Panama in 2006, with the population held at bay by a biological barrier at the Darién Gap, at the border of Panama and Colombia.
However, in 2022, the barrier was breached, and the flies began advancing northward, primarily through unmonitored livestock movements. The latest surveillance suggests the flies are now about 370 miles south of Texas.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/08/texas-prepares-for-wa...
https://kbhbradio.com/usda-cuts-budget-staff-for-animal-dise...
Part of it was restored a couple of months later.
Elsewhere in the thread people have posted explainer videos (of how the program works) from 2024 that seem entirely unaware of any such breach.
The doge cuts may affect the future of this program, but have absolutely positively nothing to do with the situation now. Nothing. Not a thing.
It is fine to say doge will make this neglect worse, but the neglect happened for a decade.
And that's important. That's vital to understanding why, and how it happened.
And that is absolutely not a ridiculous concept.
The DOGE cuts directly worsened the current situation. It’s unclear if the initial covid era cuts were performed by Biden or Trump (I can’t find a date or primary source for those).
In a critical time when monitoring and action were desperately needed, we eliminated the agency that'd do that.
If there had been any political will for this things would have been set in motion since 2023, likely even before that when the reports from the scientists working on control started pouring in.
Blaming a few weeks of funding lapse one year into an outbreak in a control project that's been running for decades is absurd.
From a link in this thread: However, since 2023, cases have been increasing in number and spreading north from Panama to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico.
The cost to fight this back will definitely exponentially increase.
So I agree with the commenter that falsified my claim because they are correct, the date of breach was earlier and the time to react was then.
"A screwworm infestation is caused by larvae of the fly Cochliomyia hominivorax. These larvae can infest wounds of any warm-blooded animal, including human beings. The screwworm fly is about twice the size of a regular house fly and can be distinguished by its greenish-blue color and its large reddish-orange eyes.
Infestations can occur in any open wound, including cuts, castration wounds, navels of newborn animals, and tick bites. The wounds often contain a dark, foul-smelling discharge. Screwworm larvae distinguish themselves from other species by feeding only on the living flesh, never dead tissue. Once a wound is infested, the screwworm can eventually kill the animal or human, literally eating it alive." - Sounds great.
What assholes. :(
It doesn’t render the cattle or meat from the cattle useless. Obviously if affected cattle are untreated they will succumb to the pest.
To clarify: it was never eradicated. It’s been actively managed and kept at bay. Now it’s punching through some holes.
There are always periodic outbreaks in Central America and Mexico. The current one started in 2023.
One common vector is illegal cattle trafficking.
Beware of the fear porn spreading around this issue. I have already seen articles posted showing what happens when rubbing ones eyes or picking ones nose after handling raw food and of course it is horrific but screw worms are just one of many real risks. Food handlers in first world countries are taught not to touch their faces and to wear gloves among many other safety practices with raw meats and vegetables. Everyone both vegetarian and carnivore unknowingly eat many types of larvae, bacteria, mold, fungus and insects all the time.
I know I will get beat up for going against the agenda but I am that guy.
Food safety with raw meets isn’t really going against the agenda.
Is it just that we all spend time in our bubble and take that to other groups?
I don't even know what agenda he's going against by saying one should be careful around raw meat. Who's on the other side of this?
They're not really good, but they're safe.
Ecoli alone should be enough to be careful with handling raw meats (of any animal) and of course the worms and other things. Specially if you have ANY wounds, small as they are, if e.g. lemon juice burns, is an open wound.
Also meat should be cooked properly. Lately seems to be kind of hype, almost a competition, who eats the rawer meat. 5 star chefs are pushing more and more red, even I have seen “chefs” simply literally laying meat for 5 seconds. The texture is gummy, taste horrible, and just dangerous.
This is why natural history collections, and taxonomists are going to be more critical than ever, at some point we'll need to re-invest in knowing what's out there, and, more importantly how and why it's different than what we knew before. Biodiversity is vast, this isn't easy.
Companies that anticipate this (we know we're going to get a billion requests for "what's this fly", how can we monitize this?), and also actully understand that species are literally invaluable lab experiments running millions of years, are bound to benefit. In a not so distance Scifi future will we see big pharma, defense, etc. protecting areas and their environments because they finally grok this?
Everything I'm reading says it has been funded by USDA, and in fact funding has been significantly increased during 2025.
USDA manages the production of the sterile flies. USAID was a major funding source for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization which did the monitoring.
> Among the GHS projects killed were some dedicated to *monitoring and containing avian flu and New World Screwworm in Central America, monitoring* avian flu outbreaks in Asia and improving the detection of new strains, and efforts to combat swine fever, according to a person familiar with the situation granted anonymity to speak frankly.
you might not have intended to mislead, but the cited source indicates that at least some were defined and thus halted, in partial contradiction to your line "Screwworm detection and prevention was not halted because of the USAID shutdown"
I tease. Folks have strong opinions on the topic.
It’s not a huge problem in the US. We eradicated screwworm in the 60s.
We are trying very hard to keep it out. The US normally works very hard to monitor and prevent these situations in trade partners.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flesh-eating-scre...
Was is past tense, indicating a historical problem, not a current one.
But a third option I don’t see talked about a lot: finish the job. We could drop sterile flies all over the USA and Mexico all the way into panama with 1950s tech. We have drones now, surely some inexpensive paper planes shoved out of the back of hercs could cover roughly all of south america for fairly cheap.
Could a few cargo ships be converted into floating fly farm aircraft carriers on either coast, maybe another in the amazon, and then just use a hundred reaper drone type things to do a creeping barrage? This must be within the budget of even a modest nation state.
We have different responses to other pests. For example, Florida maintains a mosquito control program that sprays vast swathes of the state with insecticide from both the ground and the air every 7 days. I imagine that other southern states do as well.
USDA approved an emergency funding of 165 million in 2024 for this issue
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/news/agency-announcements/usda-ap...
Government budgets are usually public. Do you want a secondary source, like a news article?
Mexican Livestock halted while US is in trade war with Brazil (21 percent of all US beef imports).
Why add "proven" before science?
Nobody expects the USDA to handle such problems with "unproven science", for whatever it could be.
For decades they've made the sterilized flies by exposing them to gamma radiation that damages their reproductive system and it's been effective.
Am I getting doubtful of every announcement from this administration or are they trying to tackle conspiracy theories from the start?
I'm pretty sure it's a political thing, and is meant to be read as "don't worry, we aren't using any problematic science like mRNA vaccines".
Guess you all like eating expensive beef.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...