Flesh-eating screwworm infection confirmed in South Texas, USDA says

Image: The tip of a screw worm fly larvae. Image credit: CSIRO via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0, Article by Beth Mole. Ars Technica – June 3, 2026. Press release: USDA Confirms Presence of New World Screwworm in the United States.

A case of New World screwworm has been confirmed in South Texas, the US Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday night. It marks the first detected breach of the US-Mexico border by the ravenous flesh-eating flies, which have been making their way up through Central America for the past several years. In a social media post on Wednesday afternoon, the USDA revealed that a sample from Texas had been sent to the National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa, for confirmatory testing of a screwworm infection. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins later posted that the testing had confirmed the infection, which was found in a 3-week-old calf in Zavala County, Texas. […]

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