Parasitic screwworm runs riot in Texas

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The Texas Observer has a colourful story on the return of the New World screwworm. The worm rarely lives beyond 30 days but in its short time on earth infects livestock, wildlife and pets by laying its eggs in wounds and body openings; these eggs then hatch into maggots that can eat live tissue. This is bad news for Texas’s $15bn cattle industry and an indictment of failures to fully eradicate the worm from the US over the past 60 years. Previous Doge cuts have been blamed for the resurgence of the screwworm, but the reality is more complicated. Although Doge appeared to cancel funding to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which monitors outbreaks, the US government has put money into producing sterile flies to eradicate the flesh-eating kind. Unfortunately there may be a shortage of the good ones.