New World screwworm could devastate the Texas livestock industry, ranchers said.
FALFURRIAS, Texas—Mesquite thorns scraped Dr. Michael Vickers’s white ranch truck like nails on a chalkboard as he drove through the underbrush of his South Texas ranch searching for cattle.
The longtime Texas veterinarian has about 100 head at his 1,000-acre ranch just south of Falfurrias, where deer, wild turkey, and javelin—akin to wild pigs—roam freely.
Vultures glide overhead, ever watchful in a blue sky.
Vickers told The Epoch Times that ranches such as his are in the crosshairs of the New World screwworm, which devastated Texas livestock and wildlife in the 1970s.
Vickers, who served on the Texas Animal Health Commission, called the screwworms a catastrophic threat. They began showing up in Central America two years ago and now threaten the U.S. cattle industry and food supply.
He said the United States is ill-prepared to deal with an outbreak.
“We don’t have the facilities to combat it like we did back in the ‘70s,” Vickers said.
Horror on the Range
As a 22-year-old veterinarian fresh out of college, Vickers was thrust into the Texas screwworm crisis. He’ll never forget the stench of rotting flesh from the screwworms.
Livestock, wildlife, and birds were eaten alive—some left with gaping wounds the size of grapefruit.
Screwworm flies will also infect people. Such a case was documented at a Maryland hospital in August after a person returned from a visit to El Salvador.
“We even had some people in some nursing homes here, and some elderly people die from screwworms with the larvae getting in their nostrils and migrating up into their brains,” Vickers said in a previous interview.
The ears of cattle and horses were eaten off, and sometimes the worms would eat into the middle ear, he said. Some had their eyes eaten out.
Vickers would use a dart gun to knock out infected animals so he could kill the worms burrowed into their flesh, then treat the wounds.
In those days, he used Pink Lady, a substance the color of Pepto-Bismol, or a black tar medication called Smear 62. Both contained now-banned pesticides and chemicals, although there is currently an FDA-approved Pink Lady wound dressing on the market.
When Vickers came across animals too far gone, he would euthanize them. Some ranchers shot terminally ill animals to put them out of their misery.
Screwworm infestations begin when a female screwworm fly lays eggs on a wound or the mucus membranes of a mammal, including humans.
A wound as minor as a tick bite can attract a female fly to feed. A single female can produce about 3,000 eggs in a lifespan that can last up to 30 days.
Eggs hatch into larvae, or maggots, that burrow into the flesh of animals and begin to eat. The last major screwworm outbreak in Texas began in 1972 with 90,000 reported cases, and was mostly contained by 1975.
The screwworm’s recent northward advance coincided with a surge of illegal immigrants crossing the Darien Gap, a stretch of jungle between Panama and Colombia, once a natural barrier.
Vickers said he thinks that it’s likely that the deadly parasite will once again invade Texas, bringing a repeat of the grisly scenes he encountered half a century ago.
Ranchers and industry leaders are watching closely; a screwworm outbreak could cost Texas billions of dollars.
LeRoy Jackson, 63, runs a small herd of cattle on the La Providencia Ranch near Rio Grande City, Texas, which his family purchased in 1876.
Last week, as he and his wife, Brenda Jackson, stood outside a Starr County livestock auction, he told The Epoch Times that ranchers are taking precautions.
For them, it means spraying their herd with ivermectin, hoping that it protects against screwworms.
“I’m not going to lose the herd just because I’m being lazy,” he said.
