Cattle roam a field on Jun. 6 in La Pryor, Texas. The first case of the New World Screwworm parasite, since its eradication from the country in 1966, was reported in Zavala County's La Pryor on Wednesday by the United States Department of Agriculture. Getty Images via AFP-Yonhap
The New World screwworm fly is threatening the $113 billion U.S. cattle industry for the first time in more than half a century, as officials race to eradicate a flesh-eating parasite not seen in Texas since 1966.
Two new cases were found in a calf and a dog hundreds of miles apart, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Monday. That brings the state's total to four.
Texas is home to $17 billion worth of the nation’s cattle, making it the industry’s No. 1 state.
Screwworm flies were an annual warm-weather scourge of cattle ranchers from at least the 1930s through the 1960s, when the U.S. eradicated the pest by breeding sterile male flies and dropping swarms of them from planes to mate with wild females.
