Public Health — News & Analysis

Trump administration faces scrutiny as screwworm outbreak spreads (June 19, 2026)

June 19, 2026 — The U.S. now has 12 confirmed cases of New World screwworm in cattle, goats, sheep, and a dog across Texas and New Mexico, and ranchers and local officials are questioning whether USDA is being transparent about the outbreak's true scale.

Internal emails show beef industry leaders began assessing market impact six days before USDA publicly disclosed a human case found in a Maryland resident last August. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has publicly downplayed the danger and blamed the previous administration, even as experts say the parasite's reemergence — confined to South America for decades — has exposed gaps in the government's response capacity. Eradication depends on releasing sterile flies to disrupt breeding, but the U.S. won't have sufficient supply until a new production facility in Texas comes online, at the earliest, in 2027.

USDA has not declared a formal emergency, a step its own response playbook says would unlock more federal resources; Health and Human Services already declared one last year. The agency's New World Screwworm Directorate grew from 10 to 100 staff, but APHIS (the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) lost nearly 2,000 employees — more than 20 percent of its workforce — amid broader Trump administration downsizing, eroding institutional expertise according to former officials including retired APHIS administrator Kevin Shea: "The staffing reductions at APHIS overall are a big problem. It hurts the ability to respond to new outbreaks." The dismantling of USAID also cut roughly $382 million from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, including funding for a program targeting screwworm and similar pests. Senate Democrats have urged USDA to invoke the Defense Production Act to boost sterile fly output and to compensate affected ranchers, similar to past avian flu relief programs; former Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack noted producers may avoid reporting cases without such assurances: "You can't quarantine something you're not aware of."

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller suggested ranchers are avoiding detection out of fear of quarantine, a remark Rollins rejected as "unserious" and "dangerous." Some officials involved in the response privately worry the true outbreak is larger than confirmed counts suggest, citing a calf infestation in South Texas with no traceable link to other cases. A separate case involving an infested dog in New Mexico initially prompted USDA to claim cross-border travel, before officials reversed themselves after a language-barrier-driven misunderstanding was cleared up; the dog had never left home. Officials say the general public's risk remains low, and the food supply is safe since cattle are inspected before slaughter, but acknowledge that fully restoring the natural buffer that once confined the fly to South America will likely take years rather than months.