The US has reportedly drawn up plans to breed billions of flies over Mexico in an attempt to eradicate a vicious variety of flesh-eating maggot.

The move comes as the New World Screwworm fly larvae continues to cause chaos as it infiltrates the US beef industry, affecting wider wildlife, pets and, in rare cases, humans.

According to scientists, the new batches of male sterilised maggots will be dumped over the South American nation and the US state of Texas in a bid to eradicate the vicious variety of flesh-eating larvae.

The US Department of Agriculture is said the male flies, which measure slightly larger than the average housefly, will be sterilised with radiation before being released.

The strategy, set out by scientists, will force the female screwworms to breed with the newly sterilised males.

The flesh-eating variety of the screwworm maggots were eradicated from the US in 1966, but the creatures appear to me making a comeback.

  • Stamau123@lemmy.worldOP
    5·
    10 days ago

    The article doesn’t mention why this is suddenly an issue. They used to have a narrow choke point around Panama where they did this routinely to keep these things from ever getting into the US, but that was cut as part of the “government efficiency” fiasco, so now it’s a widespread, growing, problem. Really the perfect example of why wildly cutting government spending without thought is not an ‘efficient’ approach to reducing spending.

    There is also a picture of a screw-worm infected dog in the article, if you want to see what your republican sponsored future will be

    • CaptainPedantic@lemmy.world
      3·
      10 days ago

      It’s worth noting that the current outbreak that’s occurring north of Panama started prior to DOGE doing its bullshit. Apparently it began in 2022.

      • evenglow@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 days ago

        Worth noting that people still have no idea how much damage Trump and Republicans did the first go around.

        • protist@mander.xyzEnglish
          0·
          10 days ago

          I’m not saying they didn’t do damage, but did they cut funding for this? There doesn’t seem to be any evidence of that. There was an outbreak in Florida in 2016 before the 2022 outbreak

          No concrete reason for the northward spread has been given, and Dr. Chancey said it is likely “multifactorial.” She noted that surveillance of NWS is limited in hard-to-reach areas across Central America, and livestock often are transported through unmonitored or insufficient checkpoints.

          • evenglow@lemmy.world
            0·
            10 days ago

            I’m not talking about who did what.

            I’m talking about people who don’t know what damage was done and the extent.

            If they knew, and actually cared, things would not be as bad and getting worse.

            • Yeather@lemmy.ca
              1·
              9 days ago

              This is an example of how bad they screwed things up this time!

              I meant this is an example of how bad they screwed things up last time!

              I meant I am not talking about who did what, but this is an example of what could happen because they screwed things up!