Biology can be beautiful and disgusting all at once. This is why I loved studying biology and parasites, and why I am captivated by the story of screwworm.

Screwworm is a nasty parasite that is making a come back in North America and in this episode we'll dive into the story of screwworm and hear from Dr. Phillip Kaufman, Head of the Department of Entomology at Texas A&M. He breaks down how screwworm returned and why that's a major problem.

I love this story because it demonstrates the power of adaptation and how studying a parasite like screwworm through the lens of adaptation helps us find ways to fight back.

Takeaways:

1. The New World Screwworm's return exemplifies the intricate relationship between parasitism and adaptation in biological systems.
2. Understanding the ecological impact of the New World Screwworm is crucial for livestock management and prevention of economic losses.
3. The sterile insect technique has proven effective in controlling the screwworm population, highlighting innovative approaches to pest management.
4. The cooperation between countries is vital in managing the spread of pests and diseases, as exemplified by the efforts to eradicate the screwworm.
5. The complexities of insect life, particularly parasitic species, provide insights into the adaptability and resilience of organisms in various environments.
6. The return of the New World Screwworm serves as a reminder of the importance of maintaining vigilance in ecological monitoring and research.
   • New World Screwworm Outbreak | New World Screwworm | CDC
   • COPEG – Comisión Panamá – Estados Unidos para la Erradicación y Prevención del Gusano Barrenador del Ganado
   • New World Screwworm: Rise, Fall and Resurgence
   • Phillip Kaufman - Department of Entomology - Texas A&M

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I'll also be joined by Dr. Philip Kaufman, who is a professor of entomology at Texas A and M. He's going to give us an expert analysis on the situation and explain why the Return of Screwworm has places like Texas on edge.

Before we get into it, like Review Subscribe Leave a comment Wherever you're seeing or hearing this, it really helps me out.

The reason I love this story so much is because it exemplifies the all of the things I love about biology and my specific interest in parasitism.

My first exposure to screwworm was as an undergraduate student.

I had become fascinated with parasites and invertebrates more broadly thanks to an instructor I had, Dr. Cam Goder the University of Lethbridge.

He eventually became my PhD supervisor as well, and without his influence, I certainly wouldn't be doing science journalism today.

So shout out Dr. Goder.

What really struck me about his approach to biology was his deep admiration for and curiosity about the ways in which different forms of life, to use his words, make a living.

And what he meant by that was how do organisms go about doing the essential tasks of life?

Eating, reproducing, defending themselves, getting around.

And when you look at an organism through this lens, an interesting thing happens.

You are immediately confronted by all of the incredible adaptations they've evolved to complete these tasks.

Incredible.

And specifically in the case of parasites, disgusting adaptations.

Truly wild behaviors, lifestyles, specialized organs and abilities that aid in the tough work of of making it as a biological entity on this planet.

And it's this balance and co occurrence of awe and disgust that I find truly captivating.

Think of the way spiders and some insects use digestive enzymes to liquefy their prey externally before slurping it up.

Foul but efficient.

Or the emerald cockroach wasp, which injects a sort of mind control venom into the brain of a cockroach so that it can entomb it into a burrow along with its eggs, which will eventually hatch into larvae that will consume that roach alive.

Horrifying, yet impressive.

And parasitism specifically?

Remember this is one of the most successful lifestyles on the planet.

Forces organisms to evolve incredible strategies to, quote, make a living.

And due to Their intimate connection with a host.

These strategies are often disturbing.

Take a parasite like schistosomes, which is a worm that lives in your blood and causes all sorts of nasty problems.

But it can also coat itself in your own proteins to evade detection by your immune system.

It really makes your skin crawl.

But you have to hand it to evolution.

A worm with a cloaking device.

Now, some of these adaptations are elegant and complex, but others, as we'll see with screwworm, are just brutal opportunism, exploiting a niche or a host that no one else has.

But the great thing about studying parasites through the lens of adaptation is that it will reveal how hosts can protect themselves.

This is exactly what happens in the story of screwworm.

It's a story about the amazing diversity of life on this planet.

And while it is undeniably fascinating, it can be downright disgusting.

But if you take the time to get to know an organism like screwworm, it will give away its weak spots.

So let's take a closer look at screwworm and how it makes its living.

Screwworm is, to me, one of the more horrifying parasites that you'll hear about, and that's because it's an insect which is large enough to see with the naked eye, which means you not only see the worm in action, you'll actually probably feel it, too.

You'll see what I mean in a second.

Now, screwworm is actually a fly.

And flies are admittedly annoying and gross when they're buzzing around in your kitchen after having landed on rotting or dead things.

But they're not overly threatening, and they do play an important role in cleaning up the ecosystem.

The larvae of flies, Maggots often survive by eating dead and rotting things.

But the screwworm abandoned its job as cleanup crew and adapted to eat living tissue.

Adult flies lay eggs on living hosts.

Pretty much any animal, from a cow to a goat to a deer to a human will do.

And once those eggs hatch, the maggots go about doing what maggots do, eating.

For screw worm maggots, this means screwing into the flesh.

And guess what?

They don't have teeth.

So that's right.

They're using digestive enzymes to liquefy tissue so they can wriggle in and slurp it up.

Once they've had enough, they drop off and complete the transformation into adult flies.

Now, flesh eating maggots would unquestionably be gnarly enough to see, but as I said, it's also probably extremely painful to feel.

But it doesn't end there, because the holes that they open up in the host expose the animal to a bunch of other complications, things like bacterial infections, which can kill a heavily infected host.

And this is why screwworm was and may be again a major problem for humans and their livestock in North America.

The New World screwworm is native to North America and it used to cause millions and millions of dollars in losses to livestock operations annually.

A cow with a bad infection can die in just 10 days.

The infections can also cause severe stress and immune reactions which lead to reduced milk production or spontaneous abortions.

And the hungry maggots ruin the meat and the hides which would otherwise be sold for food or leather.

Export restrictions are slapped on areas with screwworm outbreaks because while the meat that hasn't been liquefied is actually safe to eat, screwworm is predominantly spread by the trade and transport of animals and not by the adult flies flying to new locations.

This causes again, huge losses for the ranchers with or next to a screwworm outbreak.

And it puts pressure on these ranchers and not to report infections.

You know, it's really just not a great situation.

Treatment is also extremely difficult.

Animals need to be quarantined.

They require extremely high doses of medication and oftentimes manual removal of the worms.

We vaccinating against a 2 centimeter long flesh eating maggot is next to impossible.

And dousing the landscape with insecticide is, well, not a great solution either.

The situation looked bleak until a couple of pieces and people fell into place.

First was the successful rearing of screwworm in a lab.

In order to study the fly, researchers first had to bring it into the lab where it needed to survive and reproduce reliably.

And this is actually surprisingly difficult to do for many organisms.

Temperature, light, moisture, noise, nearly any variable you can think of, and oftentimes ones you would never think of, can disturb the organism ever so slightly so that it won't survive or reproduce in the lab setting.

Let's not forget that screwworm adapted to eat live flesh, so finding an ethical way to feed it was challenging.

And no, they don't use live animals.

But once they were able to get it to live in the lab, an ingenious strategy to eliminate screwworm became a possibility.

Two men from the US Department of Agriculture, Edward Nipling and Raymond Bushling, are credited with the strategy, which hinges on a quirky way in which the fly makes makes a living.

A strategy they called sterile insect Technique.

You see, female screwworms mate only once in their entire lifetime.

They've adapted to store sperm in their bodies and use it to fertilize all of the subsequent eggs they'll produce in their lifetime.

Therefore, the two men hypothesized that if enough male flies could be reared, sterilized and then released, they could cripple part population growth because each female that mated with one of these males would receive a dummy dose of sperm.

Unbeknownst to said female, none of the eggs she laid for the rest of her life would hatch, effectively wiping out the next generation of flies.

The last piece of the puzzle to fall in place was how to sterilize them.

Thankfully, these ideas were being tested and developed Post World War II in the atomic age, and radiation was readily available to zap these flies.

And wouldn't you know it, the plan worked.

Once out in the wild, these impotent Casanovas mated entire populations out of existence.

It worked so well that screwworm was eliminated from the island in just four months.

The US Government then invested in fly production facilities which began pumping out millions of sterile males every year.

The Darien Gap is a natural boundary of thick jungle and mountains, which is difficult for the fly to pass over.

And there's one fly production facility left just north of the Darien Gap in Panama, and it produces a blockade of sterile males, which which, along with inspections and import restrictions, have kept screwworm at bay until now.

And this is where Dr. Philip Kaufman comes in.

Dr. Kaufman is professor and head of the entomology department at Texas A and M University.

And he never imagined that he would ever have to deal with screwworm in his career.

But as it turns out, he likely will.

Dr. Koffman joined me to discuss the history of screwworm, how it fought its way back into North America.

And what that means for places like Mexico and the Southern U.S. we also discussed what it's going to take to push the worm back out again.

If you're enjoying the story so far, please, like subscribe, leave a review or a comment wherever you're hearing or seeing this.

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And now my interview with Dr. Philip Kaufman.

Doctor Kaufman, thank you so much for joining me to talk about screwworm today.

Before we get right to this outbreak, this pending outbreak, I want to ask you what it is about insects that you enjoy.

For most people, the idea of spending their time thinking about insects or even insects like screwworm is not necessarily the most enjoyable thing.

But as a professional entomologist, a professor, what it is, what is it about insects that, that you find so fascinating?

Well, insects are the most diverse group of organisms on this planet.

They have have adapted to every niche that we have and many of them have adapted to humans as we've become more stationary, shall I say, you know, we have houses and whatnot and a lot of our insects have followed us around the planet.

I'm particularly interested in, in those insects that affect animals, and that includes humans because they can cause a great deal of pain and suffering.

Whether it's transmission of pathogens such as mosquitoes transmitting malaria or dengue or zika to insects that feed on blood are just highly irritating.

Most of us when we were kids had head lice.

And head lice is a small blood sucking insect and it can be traumatizing to a child to have that.

But lice itself have caused a great deal of damage to humans across, across history.

Right.

It had an impact on Napoleon's attempt to conquer Russia.

So these small, small arthropods have had major impacts on human history and development of society.

And I find that fascinating.

But I also really enjoy trying to find ways to suppress or keep those insects from causing damage that we all then experience, whether it's us or our pets or our livestock or just wildlife in general.

Right.

Well, and that, that leads us to, to the screw worm.

What, what I wanted to talk to you about today.

So you've kind of alluded to it actually in, in the, in that answer.

But you know, the idea that this, this one little fly or, you know, maggots that we've seen, you know, we've all seen maggots before, can be such a devastating problem that, you know, millions and millions of dollars are spent trying to eradicate it.

How, how does that work?

How is it that this one fly is so problematic for an Individual cow, which is a large animal, and then, you know, a herd or the entire, you know, livestock industry in Texas.

Right.

So, so this fly is a type of blowfly.

And most of us have seen blowflies.

We may look away when we see it, but most of us have seen blow flies on dead animals.

So most of the other blow flies prefer to lay their eggs on dead animals, and then their larvae consume that dead animal, which makes it disappear and recycles those nutrients.

But this particular fly, probably millions of years ago, made a, we call it a host switch.

They switched from feeding on dead animals to that female fly laying her eggs only on living animals.

And they switched from, you know, feeding on carrying to feeding on living animals and becoming a parasite, which is a very big risky thing for them to do because obviously animals don't like being eaten.

And so they go to great, great lengths to get rid of them.

And it's kind of dangerous to do that, to have that life lifestyle.

But this fly did that.

And the challenge with the fly is that unchecked, it proliferates very, very greatly and spreads out across an environment.

And so although what might start as 1, 1 infestation on one animal, keeping in mind that that female fly lays 2 or 300 eggs, can rapidly increase in an.

In an environment where we're not trying to reduce those fly numbers or even eliminate them, which is what we try and do with this particular fly.

Because it's so bad or so damaging.

Right.

The other issue with this fly is that it's considered by international trade groups as a foreign animal disease, pest, and that's a special designation.

And that that means that it is such a damaging pest that other countries can use trade regulations to prevent importation of livestock or livestock products from countries that have an infestation of or a disease.

Right.

African swine fever virus is one of those foreign animal diseases that has severe impacts on those countries ability to export products.

Now, screwworm is not a disease.

It's a, it's a pest.

But because it can proliferate and cause so much damage, that's one of the issues.

And you know, it's estimated that it's going to cost Texas, the Texas economy, perhaps as much as $10 billion.

Not directly to cattle, but to all of our livestock industries and just as importantly as our, our wildlife industries.

Right.

South Texas has a very large hunting industry, whether it's for native whitetail deer or exotic species that we have running in South Texas.

And it all again, ties back to property values as well.

And it's thought that this fly suppressed populations of native wildlife like whitetail deer, but also other organisms as well.

So it's a big deal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When you, when you kind of zoom out like that and see that, you know, for an individual animal, you know, 250 of these, you know, larvae feeding on it is going to be uncomfortable to say the least and you know, devastating for that animal.

But then you have all these knock on effects and if you have a million cases of that, you know, in, in a state, that's, that's a lot.

Right.

And, and it's also important to remember these things are, are, you know, as they, they start off very small, but they get fairly good size before they're finished eating.

And then they leave that host.

But what they also leave behind is a trail of destruction of tissues as they're feeding.

And, and that tissue destruction goes along with a bacterial infection.

And often what we see is within five to seven days, a lot of times those animals die from following an infestation of the screw worm because it can create a septicemia, a bacterial infection that spreads across the body.

And if an animal is not found with an infestation early, it can get out of hand and kill those animals.

So it's not just an irritation and it, and it has to be incredibly painful.

We've had human cases of screwworm in the past and the people that have had it describe the, the intense pain from.

Right.

It's, it's an animal, a little maggot that's eating your tissue and that certainly cannot feel good.

And.

Yeah, and we can at least recognize that and go seek medical attention.

Our animals aren't able to do that, although they can express behavioral differences that if we're cued into those may help us identify animals that aren't feeling well and to go take a closer look at those animals.

Yeah, and it really is quite nefarious because they just, if you were to try, if an animal is to try, to my understanding, to try to rub or scratch or something, they really, the name screwworm is because they really burrow in.

So it's like it becomes, you know, hard to see and amongst the fur and, and hard for an animal to reach if it was trying to rub or scratch.

So yeah, really, really quite nasty.

So now that the stakes have been set.

This is not a good situation.

We understand that, you know, using sterile insect technique, this was eradicated.

So how did screw worm return?

Is it a matter of, you know, breakdown of control strategies, land use changes?

There's a number of factors, I'm sure.

What do we know about why it's coming back?

So through cooperative agreements with Mexico and other Central American countries, we partnered with them over about a 40, 50 year period to push the screw worm first out of the southeastern US and then out of the southwestern US down through Mexico.

And the decision was made to push it all the way down to the Darien Gap, which is the little area in, in the far end of Panama that's on the opposite side of the Panama Canal.

And that area was considered a biological barrier.

And what I mean by that is it was originally an impenetrable jungle.

There was not any livestock produced there.

Obviously animals lived there, but it wasn't a major area for livestock production.

And the idea was that they would continuously release sterile flies over a much smaller area, very narrow the gap, rather than having to release them across a country as wide as Mexico or the U.S. and they, they successfully managed that for 20 years.

And then there's no one answer for why the fly escaped that quarantine.

But what we suspect happened is that, you know, when the COVID pandemic happened, the things we witnessed in the US Certainly happened in other countries.

So there were supply chain challenges.

There were probably animal inspection stations that weren't monitored as closely.

But one of the things that, that we think also contributed is that over time, areas of the Darien Gap were, were the forests were cut down, the jungle was taken down, and they were turned into grasslands and cattle on those areas, creating a very susceptible population where the flies built up in numbers.

Kind of like if you hold your finger over the end of a garden hose, you're building pressure behind that, you release that, your thumb and the water goes shooting out.

Right.

So we, we built up probably a larger than normal population of screw worms.

We probably had fewer inspections happening there.

There's thought that there might have been reduced, may have been some challenges in the fly production process, although I'm not certain of that.

And all of these things allowed the fly to get past the quarantine area and then it first established in Mexico, in Panama, and then moved up successively through the different Central American countries.

And through great pain.

They, the one production plant that we have in the world to produce the sterile flies.

Ramped up production, but it takes a while to do that as well.

And they have been operating at over capacity for the past year, trying to slow this fly from moving further north in Mexico from where it's at.

Maybe you could just tell me a little bit more about that.

That plant.

I think that's really interesting.

It's like this lone bastion that's trying to produce these sterile insects that, that are the one thing that's going to push this back or try to stem the numbers.

So when they realize that, you know, this is happening, that is what is sort of their first, first reaction.

We got the flight.

We just try and produce as much as we can.

Or are there other steps that they're doing to try and, you know, combat this new emergence?

Right, so.

So management and eradication of the new world screw worm is what we call integrated pest management.

It's where you take multiple steps to try and reduce a pest population.

And the sterile insect technique is kind of the last step in that process.

So if we think about, you have to know where the fly is and you have to try and reduce the fly numbers.

And so one of the first things they did was tried to implement more strict movement of animals, certainly across country borders.

But this is a fly and it doesn't respect political boundaries.

But getting people who had not dealt with this fly in 10 to 20 or 30 years back into the.

The concept of you have to check your animals nearly every day and treat those infestations.

Because if we can knock the overall population, the wild population down, then when we come in with the sterile insects, it's much easier for us to completely knock that population out.

And so as the production plant had decided they needed to increase production, we also were having USDA aphis, who's our regulatory group that manages the supply, work with local countries and farmers to try and suppress the local population.

But.

But it essentially got very out of control very quickly.

I think the number that I saw was Panama went from an average of 25 cases a year outside the quarantine area to over 5,000 cases in one year.

And it's just gone up since then.

So the plant itself is.

There's only one in the world.

We originally had plants in Florida and then there was one in South Texas.

They built one in southern Mexico as they moved the quarantine, the eradication program further south.

And it's been operating since before this outbreak happened.

They were producing between 20 and 40 million flies per year.

And that was sufficient for them to suppress flies moving north and to go in and treat some of those populations that invariably get past them.

They now are producing 110 million flies per week.

They are operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And I've not toured that plant, but those that have, have essentially said they are using every square foot of that property that they're able to.

And you have to remember, this fly is not just a regular.

It may look like a Walmart from the outside, a giant warehouse, but it is a bio secure facility.

They can't just build another building and start growing these flies or you're just going to have flies escaping from a facility that's, that's not sealed.

And so it's, it's a, it's industrial production of this fly.

They produce the flies, they, they sterilize them with gamma radiation, which essentially breaks their chromosomes and makes it so the cells can't reproduce anymore.

The, the sex cells are, are broken to the point that they don't even produce, they can't produce a viable egg or sperm.

And then those sterilized flies are dispersed either by ground stations or by airplanes and done in a way that's very scientific.

They know where the habitat is that the fly fly does well.

And they also know where the cases that have been reported.

And so they can increase or decrease the release of those adult flies into areas to try and saturate an area that may have a lot of cases, but maybe you're in a more desert area where the fly doesn't do as well and you've reduced the number of releases in those areas to try and best use the fly resources that we have.

Right.

And to give perspective.

Right.

They're producing 110 million.

Only half of those are males, the other half are female.

They're all sterile.

But when we had the original eradication, the numbers that have been saved to history are 500 to 700 million flies per week.

So we are at about 20% of what we had 50 years ago when we eradicated this the first time.

Which is why it's so important that USDA is building a production plant in southern Texas.

But it's going to take a couple of years before that highly bio secure plant is ready to go.

Right.

So it's, it's mind blowing really.

When you think about the idea of like mass producing a fly like this, it has to be reared on Some kind of meat, you know, that, that it's a, it's a flesh eating animal, so it needs that.

So, so you need all of these things.

But I want to ask you, because if you keep an organism like that, you know, in a, in a lab condition and breed it yourselves, is it possible that strain, that sort of produced strain then becomes, you know, genetically different than the wild population that's reproducing and mutating and doing all the things that evolution does?

Is it possible that there then becomes a disconnect?

That's certainly possible.

And it's something that when they did the original eradication, they would re energize the colonies with flies as they move further and further south.

Interesting.

And it is something that was done in this case because, you know, originally we didn't understand why the fly got past us.

It may have lost its competitiveness.

Right, because you're releasing all these males.

The females in the wild have to accept that male before she'll mate with them.

And there were thoughts that perhaps that had changed.

And so they, the flies that we're currently dealing with came out of Colombia, right.

It's, it's where Panama connects to South America.

And that is the fly strain that they're currently releasing which is most closely related to the flies, of course, that came through the Darien Gap.

And so yes, they are, but it's not something, you know, it takes getting an insect to grow in a cage takes special skills and very special people that understand how to do that.

It is not a simple task as it might seem.

And you know, we, we have some phenomenal people down in Panama that are, that are working their tails off to try and make sure that this has as minimal of an impact as it can.

And you know, but, but again the, and I, I did want to clarify one thing.

They don't rear this on living animals.

This, this is an artificial diet now.

So it does use animal products, but those animal products come from slaughter plants.

So in the old days they used horse meat.

They don't do that anymore.

It's essentially a dried blood powder mixed with A number of other things and it's very, very carefully crafted.

But there are no living animals used in the fly production.

Yeah, it's important distinction.

Thank you for making that distinction.

But it goes to this point and what I was thinking getting at too with the, with having to switch the strains and stuff too, is that it's a lot of work, right?

Like to, to get that, to get that food supply correct, you know, to get all the components of it and to prepare it in a way that the, the flies will, you will eat it.

You have to then, you know, resource start production because you need to, you know, get a whole new strain in there.

So you're starting from zero and going up.

And as you said, these, these, you know, these workers in these, these researchers, professionals in, in, in Panama are just do it.

It must be just hair on fire going, you know, full steam at this.

It's pretty, pretty impressive.

Yes.

Yeah.

And they, and, and the fly is actually fairly sensitive to CH changes in its rearing conditions.

Right.

So they're very precise on humidity and temperature and when they do certain steps, making sure that the diet is, is and it's on industrial scale.

It's a lot of media that they have to deal with and, and then getting those flies taken out.

And you can Google screwworm and Copeg and there are videos online there that, that show you how they rear the flies and, and it is massive numbers of them.

Yeah, I've seen some of that footage and it is, it is, yeah, it's mind blowing.

It's pretty impressive.

Okay, so the situation now, it's, it's moving north.

As far as I understand it, this fly does really well across North America.

It can kind of survive really anywhere it gets a foothold.

So what is the current strategy?

You know, we're rebooting plants in the US People have to remember everything that they forgot about, about screwworm.

But what are some of the other things at play?

Because animal movement obviously is going to be a big, a big factor here, right?

Oh certainly.

So historically.

So this is a tropical fly that makes incursions into temperate areas.

And of course most of the US is a temperate zone.

And so the fly moves, moves or is moved north and can do well in summertime conditions, but it will not survive in the winter.

You know, places like Oklahoma, Arkansas, it dies back from those areas every winter, whether it gets there or not.

Historically there were cases all the way up, as I understand it, all the way up into southern Canada.

But you have to remember that this fly is capable of flying about 12 miles a day.

But it's people putting infested animals on trailers and driving them two or 300 miles, hopefully not knowing that they have an infested animal that causes this fly to move into northern areas.

And that's one reason we're very concerned about people.

One, telling us that they have an infestation or they found something and two, not trying to get their animals out.

Right.

This is very treatable an animal, especially if you find it early on, you will treat this animal.

It's like any other infection.

And that animal will go on and live the rest of its life.

And it can enter the food chain.

It is not a disease.

It will just be missing part of a muscle.

And that area is typically taken out when they would be taken out if there's any damage in a processing plant.

But there are not any health concerns for consumption of, of animals that may or may not have been had an infestation of this fly.

Right.

Incredibly treatable.

So how do we, how do we work on this?

Is one, we have, we have produced Texas A&M AgriLife has produced a number of, of documents.

We have them on our website site.

We're producing more as the need arises.

We have Texas Animal Health Commission in Texas is one of our two state agencies that's leading the screw worm response along with our Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which is responsible obviously for wildlife.

Those two agencies and many others are working collaboratively to develop response plans so that if it gets here, we're able to quickly move in on it and try and eliminate it.

Right.

So we have had a couple of cases that have shown up in northern Mexico and the Mexican officials who have been great have been on top of this, notifying us that they occurred, but also taking care to eliminate those populations.

And so right now all of the active cases in Mexico are in the southern third of that country.

They are not up near the U.S. but again, diligence is going to help us by, you know, we have traps out trying to catch any errant flies.

Inspections of cattle happen.

They're required to happen in Mexico before they can move animals.

And should the fly show up here, we have response plans ready to go.

Working with usda, APHIS and our Texas Animal Health Commission to make sure that when, when, if, if we are to have it appear that we immediately open a book and it tells us what we need to do.

And everybody is on the same page because communication is absolutely critical and we have to have producers or pet owners tell us if they have an infestation because the sooner we know, the sooner we can get those sterile flies released onto their property and make sure that this doesn't infest other animals.

Right.

We have a limited window to contain it and, and keep it as small as possible, which helps us to eliminate it.

And so even if it were to show up in the U.S. we're hope, we're quite hopeful that we can descend on that and eliminate it and then we're back to an eradicated condition.

Mm.

Yeah, it's really interesting.

It's, it's this, you know, it kind of like a slow moving wave that you can kind of see coming and it's like, so you have time to, you have some time, let's say, to, to try and prepare and everything.

But that's all based on transparency, cooperation with every other, you know, place between us and them kind of thing.

So maybe just a comment on that, on how, what this says about, you know, the ability for, you know, different countries to cooperate and, and how, how, how effective that's been so far.

It, it's been very effective because we don't have to fly here.

And if, if we hadn't been able to work with Mexican officials, that fly would have come right up Mexico just like it did across Central America.

And, and that goes to my point of everybody has a role in this process, right?

So this fly does not care if it's laying its eggs in a cow, a deer, a dog or a, a person.

And it affects everybody.

And, but you have to trust that we are, with that we are capable of, of eliminating this, but our ability to do that is highly dependent on people being forthcoming with us and our state agencies.

This is not an untreatable disease.

It, the, the downside is this fly has wings.

So even if you don't report will multiply and your neighbors will end up reporting it.

You're going to be in the same situation, except it's going to be harder for us to contain.

So that's why we're, we're really asking for cooperation and for people not to move their animals out of these infested areas until they are permitted to do so.

And we have every intention of allowing the continued movement of animals, but it will take coordination to do so.

And so it's, you know, it's terrible that we're facing this situation, but we are prepared for it.

And that's very different than what happened in the Florida Keys 10 years ago.

That fly showed up.

It, it wasn't reported early and the population built up and then we Had a very damaging situation with our endangered key deer species.

But thankfully that was on an island out in the middle of, of the Strait of Florida and we're able to contain that.

But it, it took nine months for us to eradicate the fly in that case, and that was on an island.

This is.

This.

We're going to be in this for a while and the fastest way we have out of this is people cooperating and, and give us time to get that, that production facility built in South Texas so that we have the resources to suppress widespread outbreaks.

So it sounds to me like the prognosis is, is overall good.

It's just going to take some time.

It's not something that you can just again, like 30 years of knowledge and 30 years of, you know, sort of a status quo now needs to be reversed.

But the prognosis is good that this, you will get back to an eradicated stage eventually.

I believe we absolutely will get back to an eradicated stage.

It will be painful for a while should it get here because we have very different wildlife populations in South Texas than we did before and there are many other differences.

But ultimately we know the sterile insect technique works and we have a fantastic team here that is ready to go and communication is open.

And that's why I say we are prepared as we can be for this and, but it is going to take everybody joining us in, in trying to take care of our, our animals and ourselves.

Yeah, and you've kind of said it a couple times here, you know, communication, transparency, cooperation, all of these things.

But in a broad sense, what does the return of screwworm kind of teach us about infectious disease, parasite scenarios as we, you know, we're managing land differently, there's climate changing happening in different places.

And what are the overall big lessons, I guess, about a situation like this that we can take and apply in other areas.

Part of the challenge is that, that because of this being a foreign animal disease, we have not been able to have this fly in the US for research to be done, as it has been done with many other pests.

And you know, we're hoping that, that this situation will reinforce that there is a need for research even on organisms that we think we've covered, conquered.

Right.

I honestly never thought I would have to deal with the new world screw worm.

It was something that I read in history books and I talked to the, to my mentors who dealt with it and, and it was such a solid program that we didn't feel it was ever going to, to break.

But right out of sight, out of mind.

This was a fly that nobody had dealt with here for 45, 50 years.

And, and you have people need to be constantly reminded of what is the benefit of us supporting fly production facility in Panama for a fly that's 2,000 miles from our border?

Well, because it can get here very quickly with modern trade routes and, and the movement of animals.

And you know, we've seen this to a certain extent with some of our human diseases that we've thought.

Thought were pretty under control when we let off the break.

Then oftentimes nature finds a way around us and hopefully people recognize that, that, you know, we do need to be diligent about these things, but we also need to remain positive.

We fixed most of these issues in the past and we will find a way.

You know, we have some things we have advantages of, we have some chemicals now that were not available to those folks back then that can quite frankly protect our animals for quite some time.

And we're working with FDA to try and bring some of those products to the US market and do so properly.

And we have genetic technologies that we didn't have back then.

And so I think we're going to see some very important scientific advances tied to these infestations that may bear fruit for not only this fly, but for other invasive pests.

Right.

This is one of many invasive species that get into this country and, and I've seen a number of ones come in.

Citrus greening is one where it's devastated the, the citrus population in Florida.

And you know, they knew what it was, they knew how to track it, but they didn't have a way of stopping it.

We have a way of stopping this one.

We know our system works.

We just need to bide our time to develop the resources that we need in order to attack this problem in a way that we know will work.

So, you know, I'm very optimistic we'll get this figured out.

But again, it's going to be everybody's challenge to work on.

Yeah, some interesting points there about again, we kind of talked about this forgotten knowledge kind of thing because you don't update that, but the playbook is there.

You now have updated the playbook.

And maybe it's just a case of the lesson of, well, let's find a way to actually make it allowable that we can do some research on this so that you're not caught at as surprised next time.

And then like you said, there's, there's broader lessons about other, other insects and other invasive species.

So thank you so much for taking the time.

I always found this one.

When I learned about this one in, in, in undergraduate invert zoology, I was just, you know, it, it blew me away.

One of the reasons, I think I went on to study parasites, because it's like you said, off the, off the top, the diversity, that's that, you know, the way that these species find a way to make a lifestyle looks like a hard way to make a life a lot of times.

But, you know, and how it fits into the greater ecology, I find it just so fascinating.

So thank you for taking the time to give us the, the, the situation.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Thank you and appreciate having the opportunity to visit with you.

Thank you so much for listening and thank you again to Dr. Kaufman for sharing his time and expertise with the show.

As always, please leave a review like Comment subscribe wherever you're getting this podcast.

You can also follow on Instagram o brad4u.

And until next time, bye for now.

Sam.

Sa.