A confirmed case of New World Screwworm brings reason for vigilance but not panic.
Dr. Russ Daly with South Dakota State Extension says it’s important to note screwworm isn’t a disease. It’s the larval stage of a fly that targets living animals.
And that fly has a limited range.
“They can fly long enough, don’t get me wrong, six to eight miles, but it’s certainly not where a screwworm from Texas is going to fly up to Nebraska or South Dakota and cause a problem,” Daly said.
As a veterinarian with background in animal public health and epidemiology, Daly says the concern is not the movement of this fly but the movement of cattle across the country from pasture to feedlots and harvest.
“We move animals very easily and very readily. At any given time, there’s hundreds of thousands of cattle on the road, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that something could have moved up from down in that area and you don’t even know that that you moved it up here. So, it’s a reason for all of us to be vigilant, not just looking at Texas and saying, well, that’s a that’s a problem down there. Because of all the animal movement, everybody needs to kind of have this in the back of their minds,” he said.
Daly says there are injectable and topical treatments but said the process can be fairly involved so there are options but it’s still concerning.
“It’s not something that is going to wreck the whole cattle industry in one fell swoop. But it is going to be something that I think is going to be a nagging problem. It’s going to be just given the geography in which we’re seeing these animals. South Texas is a pretty widespread area so, it’s going to be tricky to get rid of it. So it’s going to be something we’re probably going to have to live with for a while,” he said.
The markets have been watching for this development. In addition, it likely does not help efforts to rebuild the American herd.
Daly says it would not be a surprise for other cases to show up and said it’s also possible other cases have gone undetected so producer should be mindful it could show up elsewhere.