The Truth About Screw Worms

Screw worms nearly disappeared from American ranches sixty years ago. Dr. Eric Deeble, executive director of Americans for the Common Good and former Deputy Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs at USDA under the Biden Administration, has watched them find their way back, and he joins Heidi and Joel to explain what this parasitic fly means for livestock, trade, and the food supply.

Eric covers the biology behind the outbreak, how fast one infected animal can spread it, and why the fly is finding its way north again. He also gets into a newer technique for breeding sterile flies that could make eradication cheaper this time around.

In this episode:

Why screw worms target living tissue and what that means for treatmentHow a sterile insect technique wiped out the fly from the U.S. the first timeWhat let the fly move north againThe economic risk ranchers face from one undetected outbreakHow egg sexing could lower the cost of eradication

Resources & Links

Americans for the Common Good

Connect with Eric Deeble on:

LinkedIn

Sixty years of eradication work is unraveling. Eric explains what it'll take to fix that.

The Hot Dish is brought to you by the One Country Project. To learn more, visit OneCountryProject.org, or find us on Substack (Onecountryproject.substack.com), and on YouTube, Bluesky, and Facebook (@onecountryproject).

(00:00) - - Why screw worm's return matters to agriculture

(02:07) - - The fly's lifecycle and herd vulnerability