Hello, welcome to my first post!

You may not know I am currently learning about agricuture. Yesterday we got to learn about a pest that was recently found several miles away from the U.S.-Mexico border called the New World Screwworm. Here is a link if you are curious, be aware of potential biases in this piece: link

cows :3333333

What is so bad about these flies? Well they exhibit similar behaviors to the bot fly and burrow into the tissue of living mammals, this behavior is called myiasis (I do not recommend looking this up). These flies can infest and kill off livestock, the young of these livestock are particularly vulnerable. Meat prices are already at record highs and introducing this pest back into America could mean prices could get even higher.

Don't panic quite yet, here in the U.S. it is still considered eradicated ever since we started sterilizing male flies with radiation in the 60s, however we should keep a watch out for these pests before they get reintroduced! (I forgot to mention the government decided to stop funding one of the facilities that sterilzed the flies in the first place earlier this year, thanks government...)