Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 07/28/2025 8:41:56 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Avian Flu Wiped Out Poultry. Now the Screwworm Is Coming for Beef.
First came bird flu, which led to the culling of large swaths of the nation’s poultry flocks and the soaring egg prices that helped undermine President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s re-election. Now, ranchers in Texas and officials at the Agriculture Department are raising the next alarm: the New World screwworm.
Texas livestock producers and ranchers fear the United States is ill-equipped to handle a potential outbreak of screwworm, whose incursion into the country appears increasingly likely. With beef prices already soaring, the screwworm, whose Latin name roughly translates to “man-eater,” is a real threat, to both cows and the cost of living for America’s meat lovers.
“If we wait, we lose,” Stephen Diebel, vice president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, told state lawmakers during a hearing in Austin this week as he pleaded for intervention.
The screwworm, like the measles, may have been forgotten by many, but it’s not new. And like the measles, which has cropped up in Texas recently, screwworm was once all but eradicated from the United States.
Infestations occur when a female fly lays eggs, between 10 and 400 at a time, on a fresh animal wound. Within a few hours, the eggs hatch into larvae that burrow and feed on the flesh. As the wound worsens, it attracts more flies, which lay more eggs. After about a week, adult screwworm flies can reproduce and begin the cycle all over again. The parasitic infection can kill a cow within two weeks if left untreated. There is currently no approved treatment.
“It’s like something out of a horror movie,” the Texas agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, said in an interview. He saw distressed cattle infested with screwworm when he was a child in the...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
No, idiotic gov’t decisions “wiped out” poultry.
And, they’ll do the same with beef, if we let them.
So high egg prices undid Biden’s re-election campaign? Who knew? And here I thought it had to do with a question about his ability to cogently piece two thoughts together, a disastrous debate performance on national TV and an installed, awful replacement.
POOJA???? Are there NO AMERICANS WRITING THESE DAYS??
Round ‘em up and paint some bug killer on their backs. At least, that’s what I saw on a vet show; they castrated them, then painted stuff on their backs while they were still in the stanchion.
Why are so many cattle wounded?
There is zero reason for us to be importing livestock at all.
End of problem.
(Or dead meat.)
When he was a child???? How long ago was that? Why are there even any cattle left at all?
We’re being jerked around.
They told us that they’re coming.
Read the Screwworm Letters.
They’ve been replaced with imports
“There is currently no approved treatment.”
There have been approved treatments since the 19th century.
I am not sure but I think it contains petroleum distillates.
Didn’t read the r article but one of the first thing Sec Rollins did was stop importing Mexican cattle. There is a 300 mile barrier
The USDA used to let loose sterile screwworm flies, they would mate with the regular screwworm flies..eventually ending the problem. The original cure for the problem was pesticides.
100%. Apparently, it only hit the USA...huh.
Commie Democrats wiped out gazillions of the poultry, not avian flu.
They were eradicated in the 60s and 70s by the USDA station in Mission, Texas dropping boxes of lab bred screwwords from airplanes. The flies had been (mostly) sterilized by irradiation. Over the years of the wild females breeding with sterile males their population declined and eventually the program ended.
I remember doctoring them with my Dad too. The female flies lay eggs in any blood or scratch on the animal. (Including castration wounds and earmarks, newborns’ umbilicus and around the tail.)
It affects everything else too, not just cattle. I’ve seen sheep, goats, deer, racoons, and heard of the occasional human. I’m sure the homeless population will be getting them if we go back to those days.
Wiped out poultry? How odd that it’s still quite available in the stores, and as for the screw worms? Just another illgal alien from south of the border.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.