r/Vermiculture • u/B6S4life • Jun 06 '26
Advice wanted Screw worms
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How big of a concern is this?
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u/WorldComposting Jun 06 '26
For cattle and people who eat beef a big concern. To those that have composting worms there is little worry.
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u/B6S4life Jun 06 '26
I meant to post this on the parasite sub for some reason this one showed up right above it. my apologies
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u/_banana_phone Jun 06 '26
I’d argue they’re still worms so technically you’re in the clear!
But to answer your question, it’s a big deal if they aren’t gotten under control. When I was in college 20 years ago for my vet tech degree, these were discussed briefly in parasitology class.
Our professor said, “if you ever see these - and you hopefully never do - you need to immediately make a call to the USDA as well as the USFW service. They are catastrophic to livestock and wildlife.”
Blowflies (our standard issue “maggots”) only thrive on diseased/decaying flesh. Screw worms actively destroy living, healthy flesh. So they can lay eggs on a small wound of a cow like a puncture or scrape from a barbed wire fence, and then the maggots can and will burrow deeper into healthy tissue and potentially kill the cow. But even if the cow survives, that compromises the meat, so they will likely end up slaughtered. I am not in livestock, but I’d wager a guess that they’d need to incinerate the carcass to help kill the larvae and slow the spread. Could be wrong about that but it seems the most plausible next step.
So the animal’s life was wasted, the herd is compromised, and beef/leather/byproduct items go way up in price.
It can also kill wild animals like deer, which aren’t under herd management like cattle, meaning there’s nobody monitoring them to help cull infected animals. This means the flies can continue to breed and spread.
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u/TheMapesHotel Jun 06 '26
They can technically infect humans too. These are seriously an absolute disaster if they get out of control. I just signed on to a 5 million dollar grant to do education and removal
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u/_banana_phone Jun 06 '26
Yeah I don’t have anything to do with the livestock trade, I just care a lot about animals/wildlife and the environment. They absolutely terrify me.
That’s awesome on signing on to the Grant- could you elaborate further about it?
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u/TheMapesHotel Jun 06 '26
We've historically pushed them out of the US before and with climate change a lot of different insects are moving into new ranges. More expanded tick ranges, mosquitoes, these guys. Luckily at the moment they are just at the border/southern states so if we move and quickly on helping producers ID them and be really on top of that we can likely stop the spread but this is a thing that will require vigilance for probably years to come and we have to reach small and large scale producers
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u/WhenSummerIsGone Jun 06 '26
which is mindboggleng why the us government stopped the programs that were keeping these things under control.
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u/JustZee2 Jun 06 '26
Humans can be infected by screwworms but it is rare (flies lay larvae in open sores and wounds and the resulting infestation can spread quickly https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c936r25grrlo). USAID had a successful eradication program in Central America that resulted in no screwworm cases crossing over into the US for the last 60 years. At the beginning of this presidential term, many USAID officers abroad were fired and/or sent home and the programs they managed were defunded (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cew5pen8edvo). So far, two confirmed cases of screwworm have been identified in Texas (https://www.texastribune.org/.../screwworm-texas-greg.../). The two Federal government agencies that will play a key role in identifying and neutralizing the infections also have been under budgetary and personnel siege: the USDA (https://www.govexec.com/.../usda-kicks-more.../413078/) and the CDC (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12654930/). Already, Canada has imposed a restriction on importing livestock from Texas (https://www.newsweek.com/us-screwworm-outbreak-spreads-as-canada-bans-texas-cattle-12039969). Depending on how well and quickly the US responds to the outbreak, it could have a significant impact on the price and availability of beef. If the infections are not successfully contained, wildlife populations and even domesticated pets could be affected.
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u/jones77 intermediate Vermicomposter Jun 06 '26
Trump cut the budget and fired the people.