The Agriculture Department announced the opening of a new sterile fly dispersal facility in northeastern Mexico on Thursday to allow aerial dispersals closer to recent screwworm cases.
USDA and the Mexican government have been relying on ground releases to curb the spread of New World screwworm in northern Mexico. But the opening of the new facility in Tampico will allow more aerial releases, which can cover a larger area and cover locations unreachable by ground transportation.
“The opening of the Tampico sterile fly dispersal facility is another incredibly important tool in our arsenal to stop the spread of screwworm,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement.
The facility is about 230 miles from the site of the most recent case detection in the town of Montemorelos in the border state of Nuevo Leon, and about 350 miles from Sabinas Hidalgo, the site of a case found in September.
“The facility will ensure flexibility and responsiveness in northern Mexico, giving us a greater ability to drop sterile flies and continue to push the pest south,” Rollins added.
The U.S. border continues to remain closed to cattle trade, and the two governments are pressing ahead with plans to open another sterile fly production facility in Metapa, Mexico, which is set to come online next summer.
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The administration is also working on a U.S. dispersal facility in Edinburg, Texas, set for completion in early 2026, according to the statement.
The announcement of the Tampico facility’s opening comes a week after Rollins travelled to Mexico as part of a U.S. trade mission. While there, she and Undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Dudley Hoskins visited Chiapas and held meetings on containing New World screwworm. Rollins also discussed U.S. and Mexican cooperation on the threat with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Both governments are working together on the sterile insect releases, which use radiation to sterilize reared flies and attempt to overwhelm wild populations.
It hasn’t been entirely an entirely turbulence-free relationship, however. Agri-Pulse reported earlier this year that U.S. officials have been frustrated by credentialing snags and miscommunications that hampered dispersal flights, as well as import restrictions that created hiccups in rapidly scaling up the effort.
Last month, Mexico’s Agriculture Minister Julio Berdegue was in Washington to appeal to the administration to resume livestock trade, Reuters reported at the time. But with a September case less than 70 miles from the U.S. border, U.S. officials didn't budge.
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