Screw Worm

 June 9, 2026 -- 

I read the Wall Street Journal "Ten Point" every morning. And this morning, I was alarmed to read in it that the New World screw worm has now been detected in Texas cattle. I suspect I'm in a small, small minority in my demographic and friend group in Dallas that's actually worried about this (although perhaps not). I do find my worry odd from a perspective of pure self-interest: I'm not "in" agriculture professionally, I don't live in a farming/ranching community, and I live in a huge urban area darn near a thousand miles away from Zavala County, Texas. My day-to-day has a lot to do with kids, their basketball, baseball, volleyball, and other activities, my high-rise-enveloped professional life, and the daily balancing act of family, career, and personal time (this is one of those instances where one wishes blogger had footnotes . . . I want to develop the theme of "personal time" for a mid-40s parent, and whether that's something desirable or good, and what it ideally should look like). It has next to nothing to do with livestock.

But livestock does have a lot to do with my worldview. I've never gotten over (and I'm not sure I want to get over) the escapism and magic of cowboy movies, and a big part of my psyche is held captive by the mythos of the American West and its adventure, hardship, freedom, and beauty. Going out to my wife's family's ranch and riding a horse through a thick stand of wind-tickled bluestem is a rapturous experience, and I'll confess that my thoughts linger there more than they should. There, cows are ever present, and while I know little about doctoring them, feeding them, rotating them on pasture, or making any money off them, they're a fixture of the landscape that's always at the back of my mind.

I'll also confess that food is a big part of my worldview. I love to cook, especially smoking and grilling, and my own personal food pyramid is crowned by beef as its capstone. Just last night, I cooked a beautiful, prime ribeye (purchased at 50% off, thanks to a Saturday morning run to Tom Thumb for omelete makings) in the cast iron, which made for a sumptuous meal. Years ago, when my wife and I got married, we had a garden in our back yard. We ate sparingly few vegetables from it (chiefly because we grew sparingly few vegetables from it), but it was a fun, calming hobby that bolstered appreciation for real food production and enhanced my awareness of where food comes from. (Yes, this project went hand in glove with reading Omnivore's Dilemma and watching Food, Inc. But it wasn't a "phase" from which I've moved on . . . if we lived on a lot bigger than 5,000 square feet now, I'd go right back to gardening attempting to garden.)

All these threads--the love of the cowboy, the love for food, and the appreciation for gardening and husbandry--coalesce into a worldview that esteems the analog, the organic, and the sustainable, and highly regards land and what can be made from it.

And while I was reading "The Ten Point" this morning, with its unsettling news of screw worms' appearance in Texas, I wondered whether last night's meal would become a rarity over the next 4-5 years, and how the ranch responds to this, and what this will do to the real rancher across the road who runs 2,000 cattle on his acreage. 

From a public policy and science standpoint, there are too many threads to even begin entertaining which one to pull on. We even don't have to get to public policy about prevention or eradication: we can just start with the question, "Was this preventable?" In addition to the above experiences that inform my worldview, one of the biggest drivers was Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, and particularly the philosophy of chaos theory exposited throughout the novel by Ian Malcolm. (I read Jurassic Park after oral surgery as a middle-schooler . . . doubtless whatever cocktail of drugs I was on stayed with me and made my already-plastic brain all the more impressionable, but given Michael Crichton's provenance as a thinker, I'm unashamed to admit the book's impact on me.) My biggest takeaway from Malcolm's monologues, diatribes, and dialogues was that: (i) the world is immensely complex, and far more than we can ever know; (ii) we must have intellectual humility both individually and as a species; and (iii) that due to the world's complexity, we can never truly prevent the consequences of natural forces. By my lights, it's reasonably approximated by Murphy's Law: if something can go wrong, it will. We can slow nature down, but we will never truly "prevent" natural consequences.

What does this have to do with screw worm? Well, we had "constructed" a "biological barrier" against screw worm across the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia. Beginning in the middle of the 20th century, the United States began breeding sterile male screw worm flies, whose sterility was the key to their eradication. Female screw worm flies mate only once in their lives, and so if they mate only with sterile males, then the species is unable to reproduce. This approach was immensely effective, and by the 1970s, the US, Mexico, and Central American had eradicated screw worm. There were four facilities that bred these flies--one in Florida, one in Texas, one in Chiapas, Mexico, and one in Panama, with the Panamanian facility ostensibly continuing to support eradication efforts over the last several decades. Thus, the screw worm flies were supposed to be contained on the southeastern side of the Darien Gap in Colombia.

But cracks in the barrier began to emerge. Naturally, Obama gave the Mexican facility back to Mexico in 2012. And Trump (again, naturally) fostered fractures in our partnership with the Mexican government over tariffs and the general buffoonery of his administration, and (surprise!) the Mexican government began lackadaiscally  reporting the data it was supposed to. I have seen no reporting on why the Panamanian facility was ineffective in containing the virus, but speculation is that the COVID-19 Pandemic complicated operational inputs, that the mass immigrations/migrations from Central and South America helped push the screw worm flies north, and that the U.S. and Mexico did a lax job policing South American cattle shipments.

Again, there are enough threads here to stock a needlepoint shop: ag policy, scientific R&D policy, foreign policy, immigration policy, natural philosophy. It's apparent that the US foresaw this problem some time ago, as we have a new facility coming online in 2027 to release sterile screw worm flies in Texas. I'm not close to informed enough to guess whether the government's response has been proactive, reasonable, or adequate, but I would posit that: (i) this has the potential to be a huge problem and upset the economy and food supply chain; and (ii) we simply had a blind spot fueled by a hubris of triumph over nature and our faith in other nations' ability to partner with us and fund vital programs.

I would say that the Mabrys will eat a lot of venison in 2026-27, but turns out screw worms can also infest deer. Regardless, we must trust that Sid Miller, Brooke Rollins, the USDA, and private actors all take the path of prudence and that we stanch the effects of this crisis sooner rather than later. And most importantly: (ii) my own worrying will not help; and (ii) God is in control.

I've talked a lot about worldview, and the biggest informant is that God's Providence reigns. That thought is ever-present, and I wish it were more often at the forefront of my mind in sharp focus, and not a life raft I see at the corner of my eye as I thrash about in the waves and currents of worry.