US to breed billions of flies and dump them out of aircraft in bid to fight flesh-eating maggot | US news

The US government is preparing to raise billions of flies and throw them planes on Mexico and South Texas to fight a flesh eating asticote.

It looks like the intrigue of a horror film, but it is part of the government’s plans to protect the United States from a bug that could devastate its beef industry, decimate fauna and even kill domestic animals. This strange science worked well before.

“It is exceptionally good technology,” said Edwin Burgess, assistant professor at the University of Florida who studies parasites in animals, especially livestock. “It is a big of all time in terms of translation of science to solve a kind of big problem.”

The targeted pest is the eating larva of flesh of the new world fly. The American department of agriculture plans to reproduce the breeding and the distribution of adult male flies – sterilize them with radiation before freeing them. They mate with wild females, and eggs laid by the female are not fertilized and do not hatch. There are fewer larvae and, over time, the population of flies goes out.

It is more efficient and respectful of the environment than spraying the pest in oblivion, and this is how the United States and other nations in the north of Panama have eradicated the same pests decades ago. The sterile flies of a Panama factory kept the flies contained for years, but the pest appeared in southern Mexico at the end of last year.

The USDA expects a new vision factory to be visited to be operational in southern Mexico by July 2026. It plans to open a flies distribution center in southern Texas by the end of the year so that it can import and distribute Panama flies if necessary.

Most flies feed on dead flesh, stealing the new vis -à -vis and its counterpart from the old world in Asia and Africa aberrant values ​​- and for the American beef industry, a serious threat. The females lay their eggs in injury and, sometimes, the mucus exposed.

“A bovine of a thousand pounds can be died of this in two weeks,” said Michael Bailey, elected president of the American Veterinary Medicine Association.

Veterinarians have effective treatments for animals suffering from an infestation, but it can always be unpleasant – and paralyze an animal suffering from pain.

Don Hineman, a retired western breeder, recalled infested cattle as a youngster on his family’s farm.

“It felt mean,” he said. “Like meat rot.”

The new worldwide fly fly is a tropical species, unable to survive the winters of Midwest or large plains, so it was a seasonal scourge. However, the United States and Mexico have raised and released more than 94 billion sterile flies from 1962 to 1975 to eradicate the pest, according to the USDA.

The figures must be large enough for women in the wild cannot help connect with sterile men for mating.

A biological trait gives the fly fighters a crucial wing: women are only accompanied once in their adult life for several weeks.

Alarmed by the migration of the fly to the north, the United States temporarily closed its southern border in May towards the imports of living cattle, horses and bison and it will no longer be completely open at least before mid-September.

But female flies can lay their eggs in injury on any hot blood animal, and that includes humans.

Decades ago, the United States had stolen factories in Florida and Texas, but closed while the pest was eradicated.

Panama Fly Factory can reproduce up to 117 million flies per week, but the USDA wants the ability to reproduce at least 400 million per week. It plans to spend $ 8.5 million on the Texas website and $ 21 million to convert an installation in southern Mexico for the selection of sterile fruit in the face.

In a sense, raising a large colony of flies is relatively easy, said Cassandra Olds, assistant professor of entomology at the state University of Kansas.

But, she added: “You must give the female the clues she needs to lay her eggs, then the larvae must have enough nutrients.”

Shut the factories once fed by larvae of horse meat and honey, then moved into a mixture of dried eggs and honey or molasses, depending on the previous search for the USDA. Later, the Panama factory used a mixture that included the egg powder and the red blood cells and the plasma of the cattle.

In the wild, the larvae ready for the equivalent of the cocoon scene of a butterfly placed their hosts and on the ground, sinking just below the surface and growing in adulthood inside a protective case resembling a dark brown tic candy. In the Panama factory, workers drop them off on sawdust platforms.

Security is a problem. Sonja Swiger, entomologist of Texas A&M University Extension Service, said that a reproduction center must prevent fertile adults kept for the breeding stock from escaping.

Dropping air flies can be dangerous. Last month, a plane freeing sterile flies crashed near the Mexico border with Guatemala, killing three people.

In the trials in the 1950s, according to the USDA, scientists put flies in paper cups, then released the cups of planes using special falls. Later, they loaded them in boxes with a machine known as “Packer Whiz”.

The method is always the same: light plans exceed the boxes containing flies.

Burgess called for the development of the sterile breeding and distribution of flies in the 1950s and 1960s, one of the “crowning achievements” of the USDA.

Some agriculture officials now argue that new factories should not be closed after another successful fight.

“Something that we think we have total control over – and we have declared a triumph and a victory – can always make sure that the ugly head again,” said Burgess.