Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins was in one of the New World Screwworm infested zones last week and provided an update on the efforts so far to address this pest.
“Continue to note that our food supply is completely safe. There’s no compromising of that. Our great American beef, this is an issue. It is a pest that we will continue to treat as we’re eradicating and moving back south and ultimately eradicating forever under all of the things that we have deployed. But as I mentioned earlier this week, we’ve moved the actual testing from Iowa down to our brand new facility in Kerrville. We actually just opened up about a month ago. So very, very important to have the best on, best scientists, best researchers, best technicians on the field and really grateful for that,” said Secretary Rollins.
“Grateful for our partnership with the governor, with our state of Texas, with Texas A&M and AgriLife, and of course all of our partners across the federal government, whether it is the War Department, Secretary Pete Hegseth, prioritizing, putting at the very top of his list in the Army Corps of Engineers, the Edinburgh facility, which once it comes online will give us about 300 million to 400 million sterile flies. Also at that Edinburgh facility, we haven’t talked about this much, but in February we opened a new dispersal facility, what four months ago, that allows us to move the flies that are currently being created in Panama or born in Panama up to this dispersal facility, which has allowed us to better disperse these flies in preparation for the news that we got last Wednesday,” said Secretary Rollins.
“As we mentioned in response to this first detection in Texas, it’s why we’re here today. We have released 4 million flies on the ground, but also 4 million from the air. And other than that initial second detection, which was about five miles away, we’ve had no other detections in this area. So again, it doesn’t mean there won’t be more, but this technology works and it works well and it is proven over and over again,” said Secretary Rollins.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.