NCBA is urging Congress to pass the Stop Screwworms Act, warning the devastating pest could make its return to U.S. soils as soon as late summer.
The organization’s Senior Vice President of Government Affairs breaks down what the legislation really means.
According to Ethan Lane, “The Stop Screwworms Act is a critical piece of legislation just introduced on Capitol Hill by Tony Gonzalez, Congressman from West Texas, and a host of his delegation— members from the state of Texas, including both Senators, as well as Senators from New Mexico and elsewhere. Really standing up for cattle producers around the country and those that are in the path of this incursion from Mexico by the new world screwworm. This bill allocates $300 million to construct a facility here in the United States to allow us to manufacture the hundreds of millions of sterile, male screwworm flies needed weekly to combat this incursion and push it back down into Mexico, where it’s been since the 1960s.”
Lane says that the legislation is a move in the right direction for this issue.
“This is exactly what we needed in this conversation in Washington, particularly with everything going on right now with reconciliation and all of these different big, beautiful bills happening in Washington,” he adds. “This is an important single piece of legislation that really highlights exactly what’s needed from Congress to combat this threat.”
New world screwworm has been eradicated from the United States for nearly 30 years. It is considered endemic in countries like Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.
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