US to dump billions of flies over Mexico in $30m fight against flesh-eating maggots

https://www.lbc.co.uk/world-news/us-dump-billions-flies-mexico-30m-fight-against-flesh-eating-maggots/

21 comments

  2. I thought all maggots are flesh eating ?

    But reading the article, yes, screwworms are nasty.

  5. I don’t trust our US anymore. Mexico, be aware, stay safe

  6. I hate maggots, but I also hate flies. This sounds terrible for people that live there.

  10. I’m honestly surprised DOGE or RFK jr has left any scientists employed.

  11. I thought the USA no longer believed in science and that they hated Mexican people. So confused.

  13. Naw these maggots are something serious beef would shoot up to 400 a pound if they made it stateside. But I thought they already killed off those maggots liked before the 1980s

  14. This has occurred for decades and is a public health miracle. It’s a good thing and shows amazing cooperation between multiple countries.

  15. so you mean we’re just doing what trump stopped earlier in the year…because this administration is a bunch of morons.

  16. This was routine and cheap, now we need to mobilize a massive reinforcement effort to fix it.

  20. I thought they managed to use that technique to get rid of screw worm in all of north America down to the Darién Gap. I guess it came back.

    In case anyone was wondering what is going:

    Screwworm like to burrow into flesh, which is bad for human and worse for cows who don’t have limbs other than their tail to get rid of them.

    Irradiated flies incapable of procreating are being released to interfere with the natural flies and keep them from having actual offspring. It works very well.

    Unfortunately the US is really big and constantly having to release irradiated flies over all of the southern US when new ones come up from Mexico is really expensive.

    At some point a smart person looked at a map and realized patrolling the entire US border for flies is hard, but the continent gets narrower down south. So it would be more cost effective to get rid of the pest in Mexico too and only patrol a much narrower strip in southern Mexico to get the same results. then they took it to its ultimate conclusion and eradicated the pest all the way down to Panama where the continent is extremely narrow and you would have a much smaller border to defend.

    This incidentally helps out a lot of farmers in central America but it actually saves US taxpayer money.

    Sometimes being charitable is the cheapest option.

    It worked well for many years.

    Until now.

    Not sure what happened to make them have to go up to Mexico again when the front was down in Panama for so long, but I assume it can be traced to human being stupid.

  21. Wait until Bobby Brainworms brainworm Bobby hears about what they will do to his family!

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