6 cases confirmed now: 4 cattle and a goat in Texas, 1 dog in New Mexico. It's impossible to know the number of infections in wildlife. Shouldn't affect beef prices in the short term, but it also means prices won't be going down any time soon. It's another factor in the inability to regrow the herd numbers (at a ~75 year low in the US). We've known this was inevitable for about 4 years and the Feds drug their feet on a response. Finally broke ground on a new sterile fly breeding facility in Texas recently, but it won't have product to disperse for another year (we've been importing flies from the facility in Panama). https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/09/business/what-consumers-should-know-about-screwworm https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5917187-trump-blames-biden-screwworm/ https://www.aphis.usda.gov/news/age...dinated-response-new-world-screwworm-new-case
My next door neighbors had bagworms tear up a juniper tree over the last 2 weeks. Those gross little bastards kept crawling up my garage door. I'm sorta all out on all worms now of any nature except for the breakdance move which, of course, I'm all in on.
Gee, I wonder if our gutted government agencies run by unqualified people will be able to rise to the occasion to handle this potentially catastrophic situation?
Hangout appropriate reply: It's more the opposite- the appropriate government agency that watches for this type of stuff was gutted (numbers show).
I may have worded it imprecisely, but we're not in disagreement. Most federal agencies have been gutted and agency heads replaced with unqualified sycophants.
OR....: Several federal agencies have experienced significant budget or staffing reductions, accompanied by the appointment of leadership personnel whose primary qualifications are aligned with political objectives rather than traditional agency expertise.
"It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear. And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows."
