The U.S. food supply is “not at risk” from the return of the flesh-eating screwworm parasite to Texas, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Monday. “This is not a virus, it’s not a disease, it’s just a little pest, a larva that lands in a calf’s wound, for example, and it can be treated,” Rollins said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.””We have boots on the ground … we’ll be able to beat this back, but we’re going to do everything we can, investing over a billion dollars to push this pest back into Mexico, then to eradicate, as we did about 50 years ago,” she later added.Her comments came shortly before the USDA confirmed two additional cases of screwworm in Texas — one in a calf in La Salle County and another in a dog in Andrews County — bringing the total cases to four. The agency said more information will be released on the new cases, but that early reports indicate that the dog was recently in Mexico.The newest case in Zavala County, Texas, was detected on a ranch roughly 5 miles from the first positive case of screwworm in Texas, which the USDA confirmed on Wednesday. They are the first screwworm cases since the 1960s.The New World screwworm is a parasitic fly whose larvae burrow into the flesh of living warm-blooded animals, causing painful wounds that can become life-threatening without treatment. The pest poses a risk to livestock, wildlife, pets and, in uncommon cases, people.Cattle roam a field on June 6, 2026 in La Pryor, Texas. The first case of the New World Screwworm parasite, since its eradication from th …
