Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins visited the Texas A&M Beef Center this week, where she gave a briefing on surveillance and strategies to prevent New World Screwworm in American livestock.
She says tackling the issue is imperative, and the road ahead will be a long one.
“There is no doubt that the potential devastating consequences of not getting this under control, I think, are beyond what many of us can even imagine, because it was really our grandfathers and grandfathers of all of these cattle ranchers that are standing behind me. They are the ones who had the institutional knowledge that knew how to battle this 40, 50, 60 years ago. So we have a whole new generation now of cattle raisers and veterinarians and others that haven’t really had to lean into this in our lifetime. So we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Buck Wehrbein, president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and a cattle feeder, stressed the importance of keeping international protocols in place.
“I was in Washington last week, and we went to the Mexican Embassy, and in no uncertain and very strenuous terms, impressed upon them the importance of their doing their part. We’re all working on this together. The Panamanians are working on it, they’re working on it, and we’re working on it. The Mexican government did a great job on the border and getting protocols in place where we could start crossing cattle again, which they’re a big part of our program in the United States, and being short on cattle, we need them actually. So, they did a really good job with that, but they need to continue that with, as I said, these planes landing and allowing that process to go. It will work, and we know what to do, they just need to let it happen.”
New World Screwworm has been eradicated in the U.S. since the 1970s.
