The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has now confirmed three more cases of the flesh-eating parasite known as the New World Screwworm that’s made it across the U.S./mexico border, making 7 cases overall. That includes one case in New Mexico involving a dog.
The news comes just as Brian Kirkpatrick with Texas Public Radio got a look inside the Knipling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research laboratory, which just opened in May. The lab was named for the researchers who developed the sterile insect technique to slow or stop the spread of screwworm in the 1940s and 50s.
Tens of millions of sterile flies have been released to interfere with screwworm reproduction in past decades. The USDA's Undersecretary for Research, Scott Hutchins, says they have a new fly that grew out of the work of those researchers. "We refer to it as the Novo Fly. Novo is Latin for new and it's the root for innovate. And this particular innovation is exactly that.”
Hutchins explained what makes the Novo Fly such an advancement. “It's going to allow us to almost instantaneously double the number of flies, sterile flies, that we put in the fight because it's going to allow us to produce only male sterile flies." Officials with the Agriculture Research Service are also working to develop an odor that specifically attracts screwworm female flies. Such an odor can be used to lure the females and eradicate them.
And development continues on precise computer modeling on the fly and its movement using A-I. Such modeling helps determine where sterile flies should be dropped into the wild.
