Good cattle prices never seem to last long.  Something always seems to give just as ranchers are getting a paycheck that will do more than merely help them get by.  Predicting the volatile cattle markets is nearly impossible with so many variables influencing the final price.  

The list of influencing factors is lengthy from severe weather events like drought, blizzard, and extremely high or freezing temps to the happenings of international trade like tariffs, exports and imports.  Input costs like fuel and feed have their own unpredictable markets that will affect the cattle market like falling dominoes.

The upcoming administration change has had cattle producers scratching their heads wondering how the announced trade changes will eventually affect the market.  Just when so-called experts had an idea of what to expect, a new twist has entered the scene even before the new president has taken office.

On November 22, 2024, the Mexican government informed the USDA that a case of New World Screwworm (NWS) had been identified at an inspection point in Chiapas, a southern Mexico state close to the border with Guatemala.  Live rumination imports, namely cattle and bison, from Mexico were restricted beginning on November 25 with no marked end to the restriction.

The import block may seem an extreme reaction for something that was detected 1200 miles as the crow flies from the Texas border, but US producers of old had their own conflict with NWS long ago.

In 1933, NWS were accidentally introduced into the US when a number of infected animals were shipped to the southwest states.  Slowly the infestation began to spread, eventually migrating as far as South Dakota.  Using warm blooded animals as their host, the NWS would burrow into an open wound to lay their eggs.  The infestation would further aggravate the wound, causing a secondary infection.  In cases left untreated, animals would eventually die due to tissue damage, blood loss and systemic infection.

Annual herd losses were estimated at near 10% costing producers upwards of $20 million.  Attempts to prevent or treat infections did little to decrease the NWS population numbers or their spread.  While it was devastating to the cattle industry, livestock weren’t the only animal infected by the NWS.  The maggots could infest any warm blooded animal, including wildlife that would be impossible to identify and treat. 

Additionally, although the preferred habit for the screwworm is hot and humid, the NWS were able to withstand cold temperatures or dry climates across the US.  Waiting for a natural drop in population or extinction would likely never happen.

Producers and the USDA alike agreed that it was time to take more aggressive measures and research on eradication methods began in 1957.  Eventually research identified that by radiating male NWS flies they would become sterile, transmitting detrimental survival traits to the eggs they had fertilized, keeping the eggs from hatching.  The eradication experiment had great success, reducing the NWS by 80% in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida by 1961.

Seeing such a significant reduction in the insects, the production and dispersal of sterile flies was ramped up.  A severe winter in the southwest coupled the effects to further diminish the population numbers.  By 1967, the country went three months without a single report of a NWS infestation.  But a series of tropical storms in 1971 halted the progress that had been made and the population numbers began to build again.

At this point, the USDA realized that they alone couldn’t eradicate the insect.  The only way to finally overcome the screwworm was to work with the Mexican government to develop an international eradication program.  The program officially began in 1971.  Over the next decade, the production and dispersal of radiated flies ranging from southern Texas to southern Mexico, reduced the number of reported infections to zero.

In 2016, the economic impact of NWS was revisited to estimate what sort of toll the screwworm would take on the cattle industry. Based on the losses of livestock and the cost to monitor or treat infections in 1976 and adjusted with inflation, it was estimated that in Texas alone, producers would suffer a loss of $561 million dollars.  The impact of this to their economy would be upwards of a $1.4 billion loss.

This history is why US producers and members of the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service aren’t taking any chances of an infected animal crossing the border into the US.

Currently 5% of all feeder cattle in the US come from Mexico which introduces an additional potential problem.  Will feedlots be able to fill that void?  Will cattle markets continue to hold or even go up?  Will this raise prices for consumers?  The truth is that the rippling effects are beyond what we can guess.

So what do we know?  Protecting US producers and their operations has to remain a priority.  The devastation brought on by the NWS would not only cripple the ag industry but a number of state economies.  Operations would go bankrupt with the cost to treat compared to the losses they would incur.  Consumers would feel the impact themselves, either by paying extremely high prices at the grocery store or by living without the highly nutritious protein.

Only time will tell how this new report will truly impact US markets, producers and consumers.