(24 Jul 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cintalapa, Mexico – 23 July 2025
1. Various of cattle
2. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Edi Valencia Santos, ranch caretaker: ++PARTIALLY OVERLAID BY SHOTS 3 TO 5++
"A lot of us are treating this with gasoline. Gasoline is the most practical thing, since it’s what we have here in the countryside, but they’re recommending that we don’t use gasoline because we’re also harming the animals."
3. Cattle moving to enclosure
4. Close of cow grazing
5. Veterinarian Alfredo Chávez pulling worm out of cattle with tweezers
6. Chávez with bull
7. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Alfredo Chávez, veterinarian: ++STARTS ON SHOT 6 AND PARTIALLY OVERLAID BY SHOTS 8 AND++
"We have practically not had any official support. We reported this immediately to the agencies and they gave us tubes for samples, we took the sample. I reported to them, and that’s where it ended."
8. Various of cattle being herded
9. Various of Chávez petting bull UPSOUND (Spanish) "This one likes to give you a good headbutt."
STORYLINE:
With Mexican cattle again barred this month from entry to the United States over fears of spreading a flesh-eating parasite, ranchers and veterinarians in southern Mexico, hundreds of miles from the border, are fighting what has U.S. agricultural authorities so on edge.
In the southern state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, the New World screwworm fly’s rapid spread appears to have caught most ranchers off guard, despite memories of previous outbreaks in the 1980s and 1990s.
In the town of Cintalapa, Ranch caretaker Edi Valencia Santos said that Mexican government officials have come to his community to talk to people with livestock, but so far without resources.
He has had five infected animals on the ranch.
Meanwhile, the price of medicines used to treat livestock infected with the screwworm have soared in price.
That has led some to fall back on home remedies like applying gasoline or lime to open wounds to coax out the worms.
In addition to the cost of the medicine, treatment requires careful monitoring and usually involves multiple courses.
Any open wound, even very small ones, are an invitation to the fly to lay its eggs.
Veterinarian Alfredo Chávez, left Chiapas to study in 1989, so he says he missed seeing the effects of that outbreak, but now he’s seen cases multiply in his corner of Chiapas over the past month.
He’s heard of dozens of cases in the area now and treated about a dozen himself. It’s not just cows either — sheep, pigs, cats and dogs are targets as well.
Armed with a pair of blue tweezers and an aerosol spray that helps draw the maggots out, Chávez moves from animal to animal.
He puts maggots in plastic tubes as samples, which he provides to agricultural authorities.
But beyond providing the tubes and encouraging ranchers to report cases, he said the government has not provided much help.
"We have practically not had any official support,” he said.
The U.S. had just gradually started to reopen the border to cattle imports this month after an earlier suspension in May, when the Trump administration said it would close it again after an infected animal was found in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.
While prevalent in Central America, the concern is that the fly is moving north.
U.S. officials worry that if the fly reaches Texas, its maggots could cause large economic losses, something that happened decades ago.
Despite cattle in this region going to domestic consumption rather than to the U.S., the presence of the screwworm in Mexico has frozen cattle exports to the U.S. nationwide.
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