A dangerous flesh-eating parasite is rapidly marching toward the United States despite several desperate efforts to halt its advance. And one can thank the Mexican drug cartels for this.
As The Atlantic notes, the United States has been fighting an aerial war against the New World screwworm for 70 years. This parasite eats animals alive, including cows, pigs, deer, dogs, and even humans.
The larvae of the parasitic fly harboring the worm rip through flesh and transform small pricks into huge, revolting wounds. Worse, they produce foul-smelling odors resembling sewer gas.
It’s no wonder the worm’s scientific name, C. hominivorax, translates to “man-eater.”
In the 1950s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched an all-out assault to eradicate the screwworm.
Here is how they did it, according to The Atlantic.
Workers raised screwworms in factories, blasted them with radiation until they were sterile, and dropped the sterile adult screwworms by the millions—even hundreds of millions—weekly over the U.S., then farther south in Mexico, and eventually in the rest of North America.
The worm was eradicated from North America and Central America in the 20th century, but things have turned dark.
The outbreak began in Panama, skyrocketing from dozens a year to 1,000, despite ongoing drops of sterile flies. According to the Atlantic, the parasite then began moving northward, at first slowly and then rapidly, by 2024.
As of this month, the parasite has advanced 1,600 miles through eight countries to reach the Mexican States of Oaxaca and Veracruz, just 700 miles away from the Texas border.
According to Mark Eisele, a Cheyenne-based rancher and former president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the advance of screwworms is partly due to the Mexican drug cartels.
“All we needed to do was keep a flow of those planes. But the cartels were extorting money for every flight of flies that came out of Panama. They were extorting $35,000 a plane,” he said. “So, for all practical purposes, this is really kind of a political closing to make a point that they have got to get their act together.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has responded by indefinitely shutting down animal imports from or transferring through Mexico.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins released a statement on the invasion last week.
“The investment I am announcing today is one of many efforts my team is making around the clock to protect our animals, our farm economy, and the security of our nation’s food supply,” Rollins said.
The Cowboy State Daily notes that the U.S. imports roughly 1.3 million cattle from Mexico annually. If the import border remains closed, beef prices will remain high, though it is worth the cost to keep the screwworm from reaching the U.S.
But many ranchers fear it is too late. The Atlantic spoke to Wayne Cockrell, a Texas rancher who thinks the screwworm’s return to Texas is just a matter of time.
He explained to the outlet that the anti-screwworm program cannot produce enough sterile flies to stop the parasite’s advance, let alone send it back to Panama.
“There’s a sense of dread on my part now,” he said.
Should his fears come true, one cannot even begin to imagine the impact on the beef industry and the pork and chicken industries. Hunting may also be severely affected.
We also cannot rule out Americans coming into emergency rooms with the most awful and disgusting wounds imaginable.
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