The United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service has opened the Knippling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory in Kerrville, Texas. In a press release posted by the USDA, the goal of the facility is to “provide the U.S. cattle industry with innovative tools and advanced technologies to manage and eliminate the invasive fly and tick pests that threaten the U.S. cattle industry.”
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins made a statement on the opening, saying, “The Trump administration has been committed to eradicating pests that could harm our American livestock since the President has been sworn in. The brand-new Knippling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory will allow us to research and find new active measures to keep current and future threats away from our borders. We have taken extraordinary actions to keep the new world screwworm out of the United States, and this lab will help us accelerate our offensive efforts to drive this pest further away from our borders.”
Kim Lohmeier, Director of USDA’s Knippling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Lab, spoke on the new facility, saying, “Some of the things we’ll have here is state-of-the-art, about 44,000-square-foot research facilities. We also have a new about 8,000-square-foot rearing facility where we are going to do all of our fly and tick rearing, and we also have a new cattle research farm and working facility. All those combined are going to enable us to do the work that we need to do to take our research program and meet the needs of our stakeholders into the next decade. That research stanchion barn allows us to put cattle in stanchion to do fly and tick studies, and then the actual laboratory part has state-of-the-art facilities that are going to include BSL-2 rearing facilities for invasive arthropods, and we also have new equipment like GC Mass Specs and other chemistry equipment to help us continue to do the work that we are doing, coming up with a better lure and a better trap for new world screwworms.”
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin and Elizabeth Sanders for Southeast AgNet.