No fat to trim: Texas beef industry profits eaten away by new threat — the screwworm

No fat to trim: Texas beef industry profits eaten away by new threat — the screwworm

James Henderson was a teenager in 1971 when he had to treat animals for a type of white maggot that ate livestock from the inside out — the New World screwworm.

Screwworms Take a Bite Out of Texas’ Beef Industry

The return of the New World screwworm is threatening the U.S. cattle industry, especially in Texas. Typically, this would have been detected early on by agricultural monitoring and disease-detection programs, but those are now gone due to cuts made by the Trump Administration.The screwworm is a parasitic blowfly whose larvae burrow into living animals. It can rapidly spread through livestock herds and requires a costly, large-scale treatment onc…