Beef is already $7.85 a pound at your grocery store – and now the parasite that once wiped out 180,000 Texas cattle in a single year just crossed back into the United States.
For decades, open-border chaos let this flesh-eating fly march 1,100 miles north through Mexico while Biden's USDA looked the other way.
Now it's in Texas – and the Trump administration is the one left fighting to keep your steaks from disappearing.
The Parasite That Ate Its Way Back Into America
The New World screwworm does not infect the meat you eat.
What it does is send maggots into the living flesh of cattle, pets, deer – and in rare cases, humans.
Leave an infestation untreated and the animal dies.
USDA confirmed the case June 3 in a three-week-old calf in Zavala County, Texas – the first detection in this country since 1966.
In 1935, Texas alone lost 180,000 head of cattle in a single year to this parasite.
https://twitter.com/SecRollins/status/2062552137473626448?s=20
When it rebounded in 1976, that outbreak cost the Texas economy between $283 million and $375 million.
Senator John Cornyn's office estimates a full outbreak today would cost the livestock industry $1 billion and the broader economy $3.7 billion.
Beef prices have already climbed 57 percent since 2020.
USDA estimates a widespread outbreak could pile on an additional $1.8 billion in losses through livestock deaths, treatment costs, and operational disruption.
Trump's USDA Held the Line for a Year Longer Than Anyone Expected
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins walked into the House Agriculture Committee June 4 with a fact that buries the entire "Trump failed" narrative.
Every government model predicted screwworms would enter the United States in 2025.
It arrived in 2026.
The Trump administration – through deployment of 100 million sterile flies a week along the southern border, 8,000 detection traps, and emergency drug approvals – bought American ranchers nearly an extra year to prepare.
"While this development is a serious threat to our livestock and wildlife, it hasn't caught us off guard," Rollins said. "We were ready and prepared."
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USDA approved an emergency topical powder treatment in April and an over-the-counter injectable drug in May – both targeting screwworm specifically – before a single confirmed US case appeared.
The agency has now established a 12-mile quarantine zone around the detection site, restricted the movement of all warm-blooded animals in the zone, and deployed both aerial and ground sterile fly releases totaling 8 million flies at the site alone.
A new sterile fly production facility is under construction in South Texas, backed by $750 million in federal commitment, that will produce hundreds of millions of sterile flies weekly when it opens.
"The United States has defeated this pest before, and we will do it again," said USDA Under Secretary Dudley Hoskins.
Texas Commissioner Says the Fight Isn't Over
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller isn't celebrating.
He called the federal response a "slow, bureaucratic, and incomplete" effort that allowed screwworm to advance more than 1,100 miles through Mexico before reaching Texas soil.
Miller is urging Trump to declare a national agricultural emergency and immediately deploy the Screwworm Adult Suppression System – a USDA-developed targeted insecticide program that kills adult flies directly, rather than waiting years for the sterile fly population to collapse on its own.
The biology backs him up.
Sterile fly programs work – the United States proved it in 1966 – but they require time measured in years, not weeks.
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Mexico currently has more than 27,000 confirmed screwworm cases, with over 2,000 still active.
That is the pressure the border is holding back right now.
Rollins placed blame directly: "the open-border policies of the last administration and the resulting illicit cattle movement."
Trump's USDA closed the border to Mexican livestock in May 2025.
By then, the parasite was already within 70 miles of Texas.
Trump built the wall of sterile flies, closed the border to Mexican cattle, and still bought American ranchers a full extra year.
Biden gave him a parasite with a 1,100-mile head start and nothing standing between it and your grocery bill.
That's the difference between the two administrations – and it's sitting in a calf's umbilical cord in Zavala County, Texas.
Sources:
- USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, "New World Screwworm," APHIS, June 2026.
- Dudley Hoskins, "USDA Confirms New World Screwworm Detection in Texas," USDA Press Release, June 4, 2026.
- Brooke Rollins, Testimony before House Agriculture Committee, June 4, 2026.
- American Farm Bureau Federation, "New World Screwworm Moves Beyond Containment Threshold," Farm Bureau Market Intel, May 2025.
- John Cornyn, "Cornyn Raises Alarm on New World Screwworm Threat," Senate.gov, July 28, 2025.
- Dallas Federal Reserve, "Ranchers Herd It All as Fewer Cattle Pressure Beef Prices," Dallas Fed, May 2026.
- Fox 7 Austin, "USDA Confirms Flesh-Eating Screwworm in Texas, Triggering Quarantines," Fox 7 Austin, June 4, 2026.