Senator Mike Rounds urges the US Department of Agriculture to delay opening the Mexican border due to the New World screwworm threat

Rounds on Dec. 12 sent a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, requesting that the USDA thoroughly investigate the threat of New World screwworm before reopening the United States-Mexico feeder cattle trade. “We really want to be careful in that we not reopen the boarder for the imports before we know for sure that the NWS is under control and that they’ve done a good job of actually getting all the protocols in place,” Rounds said. “It’s simply too big of an issue to have that get into the herd and to have problems here in the United States.” In November, the Chief Veterinary Officer of Mexico notified the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of New World screwworm being detected in a cow in southern Mexico. This caused the halt of imports of livestock from Mexico to the United States in order to stop the New World screwworm from spreading into the nation’s cattle herd. If the New World screwworm makes its way into the ...