The USDA will deploy sterile flies to combat the New World screwworm in Texas.

On January 30, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the agency announced that the 100 million sterile flies it produces weekly will begin to be dispersed along the United States-Mexico border, including the Texan side. The USDA is reallocating aircraft to disperse the sterile insects in a region 50 miles within Texas, along the border of the United States with the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. "Under the direction of Secretary [Brooke] Rollins, our top priority is to protect the United States from the boll weevil," declared Dudley Hoskins, undersecretary of marketing and regulatory programs of the USDA. "The northernmost active case of the boll weevil of the NWS in Mexico is still about 200 miles from the border, but we have observed that cases continue to spread in Tamaulipas and further south in Mexico, so we are proactively relocating our polygon while doing everything possible to prevent the boll weevil of the NWS from reaching our border." Last month, ...