The New World Screwworm Texas facility broke ground on April 17, 2026, at Moore Air Base in Edinburg, Texas, as USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Commanding General Lieutenant General William H. Graham led a ceremony marking what officials described as the most significant domestic investment in screwworm eradication infrastructure in the history of the program. The project carries a $750 million price tag and is being built through a partnership between USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the Army Corps, which is providing engineering, design, construction management, and contract oversight. Texas ranks first in the nation in cattle production, making it the frontline state for screwworm protection.
The facility’s production timeline is aggressive by design. Initial operational capability is targeted for November 2027, at which point the facility will produce 100 million sterile flies per week. Construction will continue beyond that initial milestone to scale capacity to a full 300 million sterile flies per week. USDA said it has streamlined procurement and eliminated bureaucratic barriers to keep the project on schedule, citing the urgency of building domestic production capacity as NWS cases continue to advance northward through Mexico.
New World Screwworm Texas facility ends U.S. dependence on foreign production for the sterile insect technique
Until this facility is operational, all U.S. sterile fly production relies on the COPEG facility in Panama, which currently produces 100 million sterile flies per week. USDA has also invested $21 million to modernize Mexico’s Metapa facility, which is expected to become operational in summer 2026. But the Texas groundbreaking represents the first step toward making sterile fly production a domestic capability — one that Secretary Rollins said specifically reduces U.S. dependence on other countries for what she called the best offensive tool available to push screwworm away from U.S. borders.
The sterile insect technique works because female screwworm flies mate only once. When sterile males — sterilized using irradiation in biosecure facilities — are released in large numbers into affected areas, they compete with wild males for matings. Females that mate with sterile males produce eggs that do not hatch, gradually collapsing the local fly population. This approach, combined with surveillance, animal movement restrictions, and producer education, was how the U.S. successfully eradicated NWS from the continental United States decades ago. The new facility gives the government the scale to deploy that same strategy rapidly if the parasite reestablishes itself in the United States. For more on the current NWS threat status, Agroinformacion covered the detection of New World Screwworm cases 90 miles from the Texas border.
Why the $750 million Texas investment matters for U.S. livestock and food security
New World Screwworm is a flesh-eating parasite that infests open wounds of warm-blooded animals, including cattle, deer, and in rare cases humans. A reestablishment of NWS in the United States would represent a catastrophic threat to the beef industry at a moment when the U.S. cattle herd is already at its smallest level since 1951. Senator John Cornyn, who attended the groundbreaking, noted that Texas’s position as the nation’s top cattle producer makes the screwworm threat particularly acute for the state. Representative Monica De La Cruz called the groundbreaking a historic moment for South Texas and said she was proud to have helped secure the facility.
Under Secretary Hoskins of USDA emphasized that the new facility is being designed for speed, scale, and scientific precision — the three requirements for a response capability that can keep pace with an insect that can spread rapidly under favorable conditions. The facility at Moore Air Base will complement rather than replace the Panama and Mexico operations, creating a network that allows total weekly sterile fly output to eventually reach 400 million or more when all three production sites are at capacity. The original press release was published by the USDA on April 17, 2026.