A parasite that eats livestock alive is heading towards the United States, but bipartisan legislation in Congress to tackle the issue is currently stuck.
“What’s clear is there’s more federal resources needed to be able to combat challenges to food sectors in the United States. This is a pressing one right now,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat, told NOTUS. “I appreciate actions that are being explored by the United States Department of Agriculture and Secretary Rollins, but we shouldn’t wait. The United States needs to get ready for this.”
The New World screwworm is a fly larva that burrows into animals and eats its hosts’ flesh and blood. It primarily infects livestock, but on rare occasions, humans too. It can kill a cow within two weeks when untreated.
After decades of research and testing, the U.S. eventually eradicated the screwworm in 1966 by producing and releasing hundreds of millions of sterile male flies, which mated and prevented the females from hatching eggs. This created an invisible buffer zone that generally kept the screwworm from making its way back to the United States.
Prior to eradication, the screwworm cost producers in the southeastern U.S. between $10 to $20 million per year — not accounting for inflation. There were occasional outbreaks in the decade after the “barrier zone” was established, which were economically painful. One USDA analysis found that if a similar outbreak occurred today, adjusting for inflation, it could cost the Texas economy $1.8 billion.
But cases in Central and South America have surged. Most concerning is reports in “remote farms” some 700 miles from the Texas border. In the past six months, the Department of Agriculture has suspended live cattle imports from Mexico, announced Commodity Credit Corporation emergency funding to protect livestock from the parasite and recently announced $21 million to renovate an existing fruit fly production facility in Metapa, Mexico.
Several members of Congress have introduced the STOP Screwworms Act, which would require “construction on 1 or more modular New World screwworm fly rearing facilities in eligible areas” — the facilities to raise sterile flies — and provide $300 million to USDA to do so. One Texas rancher told The Atlantic that “the facility needs to start tomorrow.”
Nothing about Congress’s pace indicates the legislation will pass tomorrow, nevermind the time it takes to actually build a facility.
“I don’t think the federal government usually acts fast enough,” Rep. Beth Van Duyne, a Republican co-sponsor of the screwworm legislation, told NOTUS. Van Duyne hails from Texas, the state with the most to fear: It’s both the closest to the reported screwworm activity and a leading cattle-production state.
“I think it should have been done yesterday,” Rep. Jake Ellzey, another Republican co-sponsor from Texas, told NOTUS. “Having done this for four years, and one session back in the Texas House, it’s an arduous process. This seems like it should be common sense, because it affects our food supply, but the wheels still move slowly.”
Ellzey pointed to the legislative calendar as a main factor in gumming up the process. The bill was introduced May 14. Three weeks old is considered a very young bill in Congress, but the STOP Screwworm Act also comes as there’s been a scramble in the House to pass a reconciliation bill and appropriations — “higher priority things,” per Ellzey.
Some members, like Luján in the Senate, want to see it moved now.
“There’s no reason it couldn’t move independently. I don’t understand why this would be controversial. This is the kind of legislation that should be able to be passed under UC,” Luján said, referencing a unanimous-consent motion that wouldn’t require the usual long legislative processes necessary to pass a bill.
Rep. Glenn “G.T.” Thompson, chair of the House Agriculture Committee, told NOTUS that the bill had been discussed, but “not by name” in his committee.
“The question will be whether we have language within the farm bill 2.0,” Thompson said.
Sen. John Hoeven, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said the committee had discussed the bill, but “we haven’t made a decision there yet.”
Thompson suggested that the number of facilities needed to be built to rear sterile screwworms, and their design, would at least be somewhat dependent on how many flies the U.S. needs to produce, and that could impact the legislation. He said that calculation takes time.
“We need to figure out how we can come up with the number of sterile flies that we need,” Thompson said. Figuring that out “probably” aligns more with a farm bill timeline. And realistically, the individual piece of legislation “probably” needs to be folded into something else to get through the House — the farm bill being the most logical place to put it.
The farm bill, a mammoth piece of agriculture legislation that usually also handles food aid policy, is usually a bipartisan bill. But the debate has become wildly partisan, so much so that in recent years only extensions of the five-year bill from 2018 have been passed.
It’s “debatable,” Ellzey said, whether the federal process will move fast enough on this preventative measure.
“I certainly hope so,” Sen. Ted Cruz, another co-sponsor of the Senate’s screwworm bill, said. “It is a very significant threat, and the administration needs to take it seriously. And I hope Congress passes our legislation.”
There was more optimism among some members as well. Thompson pointed to the recent USDA investment, while Hoeven pointed to the Agriculture Committee’s work with the Commodity Credit Corporation.
“I think under the Trump administration and with Republicans in the majority — not just the House, but the Senate — I think we’re reacting with all due diligence. I’m pleased,” Thompson said.
One thing members agreed on, however, was that the American agriculture industry would likely collapse if there was a screwworm outbreak today.
“Uh, no, definitely not,” Hoeven said when asked if the current infrastructure could withstand an outbreak. “That’s why we’re going after it aggressively, because we absolutely don’t want that.”
“No, I think that’d be a challenge,” Thompson said.
“Can the ranchers afford it? Probably not. And can the American consumer afford it? Probably not,” Ellzey said. “That’s why it’s an emergency issue.”
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Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.