Republicans Voted Against Stopping It. Now It’s Here.
Texas House Republicans spent months watching a flesh-eating parasite march north through Mexico toward the most valuable cattle industry in the country. When the moment came to fund the monitoring programs that could slow it down, every single one of them voted no.
Now screwworm is in Texas.
What They Voted Against
New World screwworm is a parasitic fly whose larvae burrow into the living flesh of warm-blooded animals. It was eradicated from the United States in the 1960s through a costly, years-long sterile fly program. Ranchers and agriculture officials have been sounding the alarm since cases were confirmed in Mexico in November 2024, watching the infections move steadily north toward the Texas border.
Texas leads the country in cattle production, bringing $15 billion a year into the state economy. The U.S. cattle herd is already at its lowest level since 1951. A serious screwworm outbreak on top of those conditions could be catastrophic.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller pleaded publicly for action, telling NBC News that officials had monitored the threat moving north for months and been ignored. Ranchers raised the alarm. Epidemiologists raised the alarm. The warnings were loud, sustained, and on the record.
Every Texas House Republican voted against the funding anyway.
What Happened Next
There are now confirmed screwworm cases in Texas. Three heads of cattle and a dog. The flies were detected just 25 miles from the border before the first Texas case emerged. Canada has already barred livestock that originated in or passed through Texas. Florida declared a separate emergency restricting animal imports from infested zones.
The USDA is now spending $750 million on a sterile fly production facility in Texas. It will not be operational until at least 2027.
The monitoring program that was cut, the one Elon Musk’s DOGE axed days before cattle imports from Mexico resumed, cost a fraction of that. Agriculture officials and industry leaders said at the time that pulling that funding while reopening the border to livestock was a dangerous combination. They were right.
The Price Everyone Pays
Ground beef has already risen from $3.95 in December 2020 to $6.89 today. USDA projections show beef prices reaching new highs through 2027 as supplies remain limited. A screwworm outbreak of the scale seen in Texas in 1976 would cause an estimated $1.8 billion in economic damage in today’s dollars.
Every Texas family paying grocery bills will feel this. Every rancher trying to hold a herd together in an already brutal market will feel this.
The Republicans who voted against the monitoring funding will not be the ones who feel it most. They will be fine.
Texas ranchers may not be so lucky.