The Korea Times

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What to know about flesh-eating screwworm and its reappearance in US

The New World screwworm fly is threatening the $113 billion U.S. cattle industry for the first time in more than half a century, as officials race to eradicate a flesh-eating parasite not seen in Texas since 1966. Two new cases were found in a calf and a dog hundreds of miles apart, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Monday. That brings the state's total to four. Texas is home to $17 billion worth of the nation’s cattle, making it the industry’s No. 1 state. Screwworm flies were an annual warm-weather scourge of cattle ranchers from at least the 1930s through the 1960s, when the U.S. eradicated the pest by breeding sterile male flies and dropping swarms of them from planes to mate with wild females. The deadly flies were detected in Mexico late in 2024 after years of being contained at the southern end of Panama. Here is what to know about the fly, the threat it poses and the response: Being unusual makes the flies a threat The New World screwworm fly in the Western Hemisphere and its Old World cousin in Africa and Asia are unusual among flies because their larvae, or maggots,

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