Mexican cattle banned from Texas on account of screwworm risk

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A single cow in Mexico and a pest the dimensions of a housefly have held up pens stuffed with Texas-bound cattle value hundreds of thousands of {dollars} for the previous six weeks.

The U.S. Division of Agriculture has banned Mexican cattle imports since November after a parasite often called screwworm, which wriggles into the flesh of livestock and kills them if left untreated, was found on a cow close to Mexico’s border with Guatemala. The ban on imports is a much bigger drawback than the screwworm itself, in keeping with Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and a few Texas cattle ranchers, who say closing cattle imports damages their livelihoods, bottlenecks beef manufacturing and will enhance beef costs for customers.

“I get calls every single day from people asking for cattle,” stated Alvaro Bustillos, president of Vaquero Buying and selling, a livestock procurement firm in El Paso. “Key steps in the production value chain are being stopped because people cannot source cattle.”

Miller remembers a time when screwworm wreaked havoc in Texas — $132 million in damages in 1976 — however stated the USDA prematurely closed imports and is hampering an trade nonetheless making an attempt to recuperate from two years of widespread drought.

“There’s no way we are going to get screwworm,” Miller instructed The Texas Tribune. “We have a very strict import process for these cattle.”

About 3% of U.S. cattle come from Mexico. However Mexican cattle play a disproportionate position in southern states’ beef manufacturing. Roughly two-thirds of Mexican cattle imports stay in Texas, New Mexico or Oklahoma, in keeping with an estimate from Ben Weinheimer, the president and CEO of the Texas Cattle Feeders Affiliation, which represents the trade throughout these three states.

Cattle crossing between Mexico and the U.S. stays on maintain whereas the USDA installs new inspection pins and enhanced security protocols to make sure cattle are wholesome. Holding the U.S. freed from screwworm saves livestock producers near $1 billion a 12 months, stated Texas Animal Well being Fee spokesperson Erin Robinson, pointing to a USDA estimate that accounts for prices of labor, therapy, veterinary care, eradication efforts and lack of manufacturing.

Shutting off Mexican cattle imports has contributed to a latest enhance in cow costs, stated David P. Anderson, a professor of agricultural economics at Texas A&M College AgriLife Extension. Costs of feeder steers, which make up a big portion of Mexican cattle imports, are forecast to rise by 8% in 2025, a USDA report states. If import restrictions proceed for for much longer, beef manufacturing might drop, pushing up costs for customers.

“Fewer cattle mean higher beef prices, increasing inflation at the checkout line,” Miller wrote in a Dec. 23 editorial, including that the ban “could send shockwaves through the beef market.”

Screwworm infestations happen when a feminine fly lays her eggs on an animal’s open wound or one other space equivalent to their eyes or mouth. The feminine can lay as much as 300 eggs at a time, and any warm-blooded animal, together with people, though uncommon, might be affected. The eggs hatch into larvae that dig into the animal and feed on residing flesh.

Screwworm was declared eradicated from the U.S. in 1966, however Texas skilled a newer outbreak in 1976 that affected 20% of cattle.

Farmers disrupted

When Bustillos discovered the weekend earlier than Thanksgiving that imports of Mexican cattle have been to be halted as a result of a single cow had screwworm, he was upset.

“Based on what is happening 3,000 kilometers down south, they are shutting us down,” Bustillos stated. “I don’t think it’s fair.”

Bustillos has a stake in each exporting and importing cattle. He’s board chairman and president of the Chihuahua Cattlemen’s Affiliation, which represents Mexican cattle producers. He additionally leads Vaquero Buying and selling, which imports greater than 200,000 Mexican cattle a 12 months and provides cows to feedlots in a number of states.

Bustillos says he has labored arduous to construct belief between the U.S. and Mexico, setting up hundreds of thousands of {dollars} value of sanitation practices that preserve livestock protected and pest free on either side of the border. Cattle getting into the U.S. will need to have well being certificates, vaccinations and testing to stop ailments from getting into the U.S, per necessities from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Well being Inspection Service.

November and December are sometimes when the U.S. imports the most important variety of cattle from Mexico. Most of these imports are small cows headed to ranches or feedlots, the place they’re fattened up earlier than getting despatched to packing crops for beef manufacturing.

The U.S. has steadily elevated Mexican cattle imports over time. In 2023, about 1.1 million cattle entered from Mexico, up from about 870,000 the 12 months prior. An prolonged drought coupled with greater U.S. cattle costs contributed to that enhance, stated Anderson, the economist.

“We have the smallest cow herd in the U.S. since 1961, so we have higher prices here,” Anderson stated about Texas’ cattle trade. “That makes us an attractive market for Mexico to sell to.”

Federal officers haven’t specified when cattle shipments will resume, however a USDA spokesperson stated in late December that shipments would resume “incrementally after the New Year, with full resumption sometime after that.”

“Protecting American livestock from foreign pests is our top priority,” the spokesperson stated in an e-mail.

Anderson stated he doesn’t count on customers to see vital enhance in beef costs if commerce resumes this month.

For Bustillos, the longer the shutdown continues, the extra involved he grows in regards to the market. Cows are imported at sure occasions of 12 months based mostly on their weight and the provision of grass for them to graze. If the border doesn’t reopen quickly, he says, cattle might begin to lose worth.

For now trade leaders are hopeful commerce opens up quickly.

“The hope is that in January we’ll start to see some semblance of normal trade,” Weinheimer stated.

‘We don’t need them again’

Anderson has heard sufficient tales about screwworm from his father to know the harm they will deliver.

“Every day they had to grab each pig and look for wounds and sores,” he stated. “They’d clean them out and put medicine on…It was horrible.”

So Anderson says it is sensible for the USDA to deal with screwworm earlier than it’s wherever close to the U.S.

“It would cost more to eradicate them if you let the problem grow bigger,” he stated.

The screwworm is eradicated by dropping sterile male flies from airplanes over massive areas. Feminine screwworm flies mate solely as soon as of their lifetime, so the a great deal of sterile male flies prompted the inhabitants to finally die out. That methodology is the one technique to eradicate the screwworm right now, in keeping with the USDA.

Jim Schwertner, who operates a ranch in Williamson County, was a younger boy serving to run his household enterprise when the sterile fly method was launched in Texas. He stated it was a recreation changer and eradicated the screwworm inside a 12 months.

“When they finally eradicated it, life was a whole lot easier for my dad and his cowboys,” Schwertner stated.

Schwertner recalled treating cattle hit by screwworm. “You’d put insecticide on with a paintbrush to keep the screwworm off the cattle,” he stated. “It was a lot of work and really expensive.”

The method has been used to create a organic barrier in opposition to the screwworm in Panama. However the pest has exploded there and crept northward in recent times, spreading by way of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. Texas and U.S. animal well being officers attribute the unfold to new areas of farming and elevated cattle motion. Federal officers permitted a $165 million emergency funding final month to cease screwworm from getting into the U.S. and to assist companions in Mexico and Central America eradicate it.

The eradication of screwworm has probably preserved Texas’ wildlife inhabitants. As lately as 2016, a resurgence of screwworm within the Florida Keys killed greater than 130 deer earlier than the pest was eradicated from the area the next 12 months utilizing the sterile fly method.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Division has requested hunters and outside lovers in South Texas to monitor for animals affected by screwworm. Any wildlife with indicators of screwworm are to be reported to a neighborhood biologist. No instances have been confirmed in Texas, a spokesperson for the Texas Animal Well being stated.

Disclosure: Texas A&M College, Texas Cattle Feeders Affiliation and Texas Parks And Wildlife Division have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that’s funded partly by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Discover a full record of them right here.