The United States plans to build a $ 750 million factory in southern Texas to raise billions of sterile flies, increasing its efforts to prevent magic-eating maggots in Mexico from crossing the border and damaging American cattle industry.
Secretary Brooke Rollins announced on Friday that the American department of agriculture hoped to be produce and release The sterile sterile sterile -to -kneading level level flies in the wild in a year from the new Moore air base factory outside Edinburgh, Texas, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the border. She also said that the USDA planned to deploy $ 100 million in technology, such as flies and lures, and raising border patrols by “tick riders” mounted on horseback and train dogs to sniff the parasite.
In addition, Rollins said that the American border will remain closed to imports of cattle, horses and bison from Mexico until the United States comes that the pest is pushed south to Panama, where the fly was contained at the end of last year thanks to the reproduction of sterile flushes. The United States has closed its border to these imports three times in the past eight months, the last In July, Following an infestation report at around 370 miles (595 kilometers) from the Texas border.
US officials fear that if the fly reaches Texas, its flesh -eating asticots can cause billions of dollars to economic losses and already cause Record prices for retail beef To increase even more, feed greater inflation. The parasite can also infest fauna, domestic animals and, sometimes, humans.
“Agricultural security is national security,” Rollins told a press conference in Texas State Capitol in Austin with the Governor of Texas Greg Abbott. “All Americans should be worried. But it is certainly Texas and our border and states producing cattle that are on the front line every day. ”
The pest was a problem for the American cattle industry for decades until the United States largely eradicated it in the 1970s by reproducing and releasing sterile male flies to reproduce with wild females. He then closed the fly factories on American soil.
The Mexican cattle industry was touched hard by infestations and the United States close its border to imports.
The Ministry of Agriculture of Mexico said on Friday that the Secretary of Agriculture and Rural Development of Mexico Julio Berdegué Sacristán and Rollins signed an action control plan for screws. It includes monitoring with traps attracting flies and establishing that livestock can only be moved to Mexico through corrals certified by the government, according to the press release.
And on the X social media platform, Berdegué said: “We will continue with conversations that will lead to actions that will reopen livestock exports.”
The new flies farming in Texas would be the first American soil for decades and represents a rise in USDA expenses for breeding and the release of sterile screw shutters. Sterile males are released in greater numbers so that wild females cannot help mating with them, producing sterile eggs that do not hatch. Finally, the population of the wild flies shrinks because women are only accompanied once in their a week life.
In June, Rollins announced a plan to convert an existing factory for the reproduction of fruit flies into one to reproduce sterile flies of the screw, as well as a plan to build a site, also on the air base near Edinburgh, for the collection of imported flies from Panama and freeing them with small air. These projects should cost a total of $ 29.5 million.
Panama Fly Factory can reproduce up to 117 million flies per week, and the new Mexican fly plant should produce up to 100 million more per week. Rollins said the new Texas factory would produce up to 300 million per week. She said that President Donald Trump’s administration wanted to end American dependence on flown -breeding in Mexico and Panama.
“It is a tactical decision that guarantees that we are prepared and not only reactive, which is today what we really worked,” said Rollins.
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Hanna reported to Topeka, Kansas. The writer Associated Press, Fabiola Sánchez, in Mexico City, contributed the reports.
