“Warp Speed” NWS Counter Offensive

An article by Angie Stump Denton on Drovers

Standing at the historic screwworm research hub in Kerrville, Texas, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins didn’t sugarcoat the latest news: multiple New World screwworm (NWS) detections in South Texas cattle, a goat in Gillespie County, Texas, and a dog in New Mexico.

“These developments obviously represent a serious threat to our livestock and wildlife, but they haven’t caught us off guard,” Rollins says. “We have been tracking this pest for a long time, and we have fought before, and we will do so again.”

Calling NWS “an ever-evolving and dynamic situation,” Rollins details a rapid build‑out of infrastructure aimed at keeping the pest in check. At a press conference in the new Knipling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory along with Governor Greg Abbott, USDA officials, Texas A&M leadership and rancher representatives, she stresses this is not a replay of the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, she frames it as a high‑stakes test of a system that has been quietly preparing for more than a year.

“Every model showed that the New World screwworm would be here in Texas by early last summer, so we bought ourselves an additional year to prepare for this moment,” she notes.

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