Canada’s food inspection agency slammed the door on Texas livestock this week after the USDA confirmed a second screwworm infection in the state, the first cases in 60 years, and a direct threat to a pipeline that funnelled 550,000 American cattle into Canada in 2025 alone.
Under the ban, any cow or horse present in Texas within 21 days of planned entry into Canada will be turned back at the border.
The rule landed fast, and with reason, with the state seeing two confirmed cases in a matter of days, both inside a 20-km-wide control zone U.S. officials hastily drew around Zavala County after the first infection surfaced Wednesday.
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That first case was found in a three-week-old calf near La Pryor, with larvae in the calf’s umbilical area. By Friday, a second case had appeared in a one-month-old calf, roughly 5.6 miles from the initial site. The USDA has imposed quarantines and movement controls across the zone, but the infections keep coming.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster on Friday in relation to the cases.
“This is likely to spread over the course of the summer,” Abbott warned.
The parasite at the centre of this is not subtle. The New World Screwworm is a fly whose females deposit eggs in open wounds of warm-blooded animals and people. The larvae burrow through living flesh and can kill an untreated host. It was considered eradicated from the U.S. in 1966, though cases have surfaced since, including an outbreak in the 1970s.
Canadian authorities said the parasite is unlikely to establish itself in Canada given the country’s colder climate.
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