By Leah Douglas
WASHINGTON, June 11 (Reuters) – The U.S. government is fast-tracking drugs and accelerating grant funding in its multi-agency strategy to beat back the New World screwworm, a parasite that threatens the nation’s beleaguered cattle herd, even as staffing cuts and a shortage of a key prevention tool have raised concerns about the response.
A widespread outbreak of the pest could pose a multi-billion-dollar threat to the beef industry, already plagued by longstanding drought. Beef prices are near record highs, contributing to Americans’ economic anxiety as the November midterms approach, where President Donald Trump’s Republican party will fight to maintain its slim control of Congress.
The USDA has been working since early last year with animal health companies, state livestock officials, farm groups and other federal agencies to prepare for the potential incursion of screwworm into the U.S., according to agency statements and Reuters interviews.
Yet the agency is operating with 25% fewer animal health experts than it had at the start of Trump’s second term, after hundreds took a financial incentive program offered as part of the administration’s earlier effort to shrink the size of the federal workforce.
That preparation has included fast-tracking screwworm treatments for farm animals and pets, building a stockpile of those treatments in Texas and surging personnel to areas of Texas where cases have been confirmed.
“We have been prepared and preparing since early last year for the re-emergence in America,” said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Monday at a press conference in Kerrville, Texas, where she also said the USDA will distribute $100 million in funding earlier than expected for new technologies to combat screwworm.
The agency has more than 100 staff working full-time on screwworm, Rollins told the Senate Agriculture Committee on Wednesday. So far, the USDA has confirmed seven screwworm cases in Texas and New Mexico, affecting five cows, a goat and a dog.
Some Texas ranchers are critical of the USDA’s response so far. Susan Storey, 62, a rancher in La Salle County, said the agency’s public communications were insufficient to soothe her concerns about the spread of the pest.
“We just want more action,” she said.
TREATMENTS FAST-TRACKED
As part of the federal preparation, the Food and Drug Administration has issued 13 emergency use authorizations or conditional approvals for screwworm treatments since last September. Both categories allow for the treatments to be used once companies have provided safety and some efficacy evidence, but without going through the FDA’s full review process.
That fast-tracking was coordinated among the FDA, the USDA and the Environmental Protection Agency, which has authority over some pesticides that could be used against screwworm, said Jeff Simmons, CEO of the animal health company Elanco.
Elanco has been closely involved in the preparations and two of the company’s fast-tracked drugs are being sent to a USDA stockpile in Texas, Simmons said.
“It is something that we were preparing for, expecting — it was probably a matter of if, not when,” Simmons said.
The animal health arm of biopharmaceutical company Merck has also worked closely with the USDA and Texas animal health officials over the past year to prepare for potential screwworm cases, and received conditional approval from the FDA for its topical screwworm treatment in December, said Justin Welsh, executive director of livestock technical services.
Welsh said the USDA response has been proactive, but that he expects to see more cases emerge.
“It’s safe to say we’ll see it continue to spread, but hopefully very slowly,” Welsh said.
SHORT ON FLIES, FEWER STAFF
The USDA is facing a shortage of one of its key tools against screwworm flies — sterile male flies that breed with females, halting reproduction. The USDA is building a facility to produce more sterile flies in Texas, but it is not expected to open until late 2027.
The USDA is deploying 100 million sterile flies produced weekly at a plant in Panama, though officials have said many millions more are needed to beat back the pest.
“We don’t have enough (flies) to do the complete push, but we do have enough to manage … the growth of the development of it in Texas,” said the USDA’s undersecretary for research, Scott Hutchins, at the Monday press conference.
The agency has also seen a significant drop in animal health response staff since the start of Trump’s second term.
According to the USDA’s Office of Inspector General, more than 2,100 staff left the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service between January and June 2025, about 25% attrition.
A group of Democratic senators wrote in a Tuesday letter to Rollins and her deputy secretary, Stephen Vaden, that staff reductions at APHIS and other USDA agencies could hamper the agency’s screwworm response.
“The reemergence of the New World screwworm in the U.S. highlights the urgent need to fully staff the USDA’s Services, which are on the frontlines of disease outbreak detection and rapid response to dangerous threats to agricultural security,” said the letter from Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and 10 others.
Rollins told the Senate Agriculture Committee that the reduced staff has not affected the agency’s screwworm response.
Veterinarians like those employed by APHIS are key to the screwworm response because they work with local, state and federal officials to observe and advise on suspected cases and guide the response, said Michael Bailey, a veterinarian and president of the American Veterinary Medical Association.
“We don’t have enough veterinarians in those public health areas to begin with, and anything that leads to them leaving the government, any area of government, is going to have a negative impact,” Bailey said.
(Reporting by Leah Douglas in Washington; additional reporting by Heather Schlitz in La Salle, Texas; Editing by Emily Schmall and Aurora Ellis)
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