New World Screwworm updates with National Cattlemen's Beef Association

The contents of this blog come from an interview conducted with National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

New World Screwworm Update

2:00

The U.S. borders to Mexico have been closed nearly a year due to new world screw warm.

Sigrid Johannes, executive director of government affairs for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, spoke about the misleading information that had people believing there were plans for the borders to reopen.

"As of today, there is still no plan on paper to reopen the border. And I think that's really important to clarify because we've had some rumors over the last few weeks. Secretary Rollins made some remarks at a at a cattle convention a couple weeks ago in Texas that sort of set off this firestorm of curiosity. I think the important things to focus on are number one, we haven't said yes or rejected a plan yet because we don't actually have a plan on paper.

So that's number one. The second thing is I know that Secretary Rollins and her whole team and all of the border state folks have been in discussions about what that might look like," Johannes said.

The U.S. is investing in sterile fly facilities to help manage and maintain the disease.

"The best way to fight screw warm is to drop sterile male screw warm flies in the environment.

They make multiple times, they suppress the wild population and that's how we eventually push this back. There's only one place on earth right now. It's called Copeg in Panama that produces those flies. They're doing about a hundred and fifteen million a week. We need probably three or four times that many to actually fight it in the U.S. And so we invested heavily in a facility in Mexico that's going to be coming online this summer. That we have a second facility which is kind of a flagship effort of USDA in South Texas in addition at More Airfield," Johannes said.

Johannes spoke of the balancing act that these outbreaks require.

"In any outbreak like this, we're always trying to balance two things. We're trying to be as aggressive as possible to stop the spread of a disease and we're trying to be as flexible as

possible to let the supply chain and business continue," Johannes said.