Texas And Mexico To Build Screwworm Fly Factories
An individual allegedly conspired with a colleague to smuggle screw worms into a nearby military hospital. Millions of screw-worm flies are being reared daily in specialized factory rooms with controlled temperature and humidity. The release process occurs multiple times per week at the Mission Texas facility. The program to release flies to combat screwworms may expand from the Southwest into Mexico and through Central America. This follows the success of the operation in pushing screwworm populations away from the border. Maintaining the sterile screw worm barrier in the Darien Gap, where Panama meets Colombia, costs $15 million per year. The maintenance cost for the multinational screwworm eradication program is described as a relatively small amount for a government program despite the scale of the collaboration.
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Sources · 7 independent
“he gets one of his colleagues to take a bunch of screw worms and sneak them into a nearby military hospital and use the X-ray machines there.”
“He shows up there with some of the radiated screw worms from his lab releases them on the island and It did not work”
“From these factories, they start releasing flies multiple times a week. So how do they do- at Mission Texas. Hear millions of screw-worm flies are being reared each day.”
“Hear millions of screw-worm flies are being reared each day. All these, like, metal machines. Sarah told us about a similar factory she went to in her reporting.”
“If we're really going to deal with a screwworm problem, then we would have to enlarge the program. What if we just kept going? This operation can now expand into Mexico.”
“Maintaining that sterile screw worm barrier only costs $15 million per year, which is a pretty reasonable price compared to the huge cost.”
“But the maintenance cost, just really not that much money for a government program. And it's just a little kind of an example of like how when with basic science, you don't always know exactly where it will go.”
“They are now building a new facility down in Texas, another one in Mexico, all told probably in the next couple years we will be producing and releasing something like 500 million flies per week.”
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