Key Points:
The USDA's "biological barrier" in Panama was dropping 100 million sterile flies a week — and it still collapsed under a warming climate.
We shut the border to Mexican cattle in May 2025. Mexican beef exports to the US jumped 23% in the first four months of 2026.
The last screwworm war took 30 years. We're running the same 1960s playbook with an American cattle herd at a 75-year low.
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Yesterday a small plane flew low over a ranch near La Pryor, Texas. Pink-dyed flies tumbled out the back. Millions of them, falling like snow onto the dry grass.
I can't stop thinking about this. The flies are sterile. We breed them in a factory, dye them pink so we can count them, and drop them from the sky. They mate with the wild flies. The wild flies lay eggs that never hatch. That's how you kill a screwworm.
We did this in the 1960s. It took us 30 years.
Now we're doing it again. Because on June 3, a rancher in Zavala County found maggots eating his three-week-old calf from the inside. The bug crossed the border. Six cases in nine days. A dog in New Mexico. Cattle in four Texas counties.
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Ground beef hit $7.85 a pound. The American herd is at a 75-year low. Your 4th of July cookout just got more expensive, and it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Here's what worries me. We saw this coming. The USDA boss, Brooke Rollins, said yesterday that every model showed this bug crossing into America in 2025. Every model. And here we are.
A year ago, we shut the border to Mexican cattle. The idea was to keep the bug out. Mexico already had close to 28,000 sick animals. We slammed the gate.
I get it. On paper it made sense. Stop the bug at the river.
But the bug walked across anyway. It came north through Central America because the planet is warmer and this bug likes warm. The factory in Panama that drops 100 million sterile flies a week couldn't hold the line. It fell apart.
And while we were busy locking the gate, something else happened.
Mexico got rich.
I don't think most people realize this part. We used to buy calves from Mexico. We'd feed them on Texas grass, finish them in Kansas feedlots, kill them in American plants, and sell American beef. The calves came in cheap. The money stayed here.
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Now Mexico keeps the calves. They feed them. They built new slaughter plants. Coahuila, one of their big beef states, is building US-approved plants right now with help from their government. They send us the finished beef instead of the live animal. Same cow. Different supply chain. The profit lives south of the border now.
In the first four months of this year, Mexican beef exports to America jumped 23%.
Twenty-three percent.
Kyle Williams runs Lubbock Feeders. He said it plain. "If they end up feeding and processing them in Mexico, how are we winning? We're giving this to them on a silver platter."
I read that quote three times. He's right. We tried to protect the American cattle business by shutting the border. We ended up handing Mexico the best part of the business. And the bug came anyway.
Now Canada is putting limits on our livestock. Our neighbors to the north are doing to us what we did to Mexico. The wheel turns.
Texas Ag Commissioner Sid Miller was asked about the federal plan to drop sterile flies. He said, "What the hell is a good fly?" I laughed when I read it. Then I stopped laughing. Because Sid Miller has a point. The plan to fight a 2026 emergency is the same plan from 1962. The plant in south Texas is being rebuilt from scratch. Nobody knows how long that takes.
Here's the thing that sits with me. The female fly lays her eggs in any open wound. A scratch. A tick bite. A fresh umbilical cord on a newborn calf. The maggots burrow into the living flesh and eat the animal alive. Untreated, the animal dies. That's the bug. That's what we wiped out 60 years ago. That's what just came back.
And we are not ready. The herd is the smallest it's been since Truman was president. The cow-calf guys are old. Their kids didn't take over. The feedlots in Kansas and Texas are running on thin margins. One bad summer of screwworm and ranchers will sell off herds again. Beef prices will climb higher. Mexico will fill the gap. Their plants are open. Ours are closing.
I don't have a clean answer for you. Nobody does. The fly drops might work. The bug might burn out. Or it might not. We might be staring at a five-year fight, or a 30-year fight like last time.
But I keep coming back to the picture in my head. A small plane. A blue Texas sky. Pink flies falling like confetti onto the same kind of pasture where this fight happened the first time. In 2026. Because we ran the same play we ran in the '60s. And while we played defense, Mexico took the field.
More on this tomorrow.
— Lauren
Editor, American Ledger
