Agriculture Ministry Heightens Surveillance to Protect Cattle Industry from Screwworms

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security, and Enterprise wants to increase its surveillance of illegal border entries to prevent the arrival of screwworms. The pests pose a major threat to Belize’s cattle industry and its arrival could spell trouble for local farmers. A recent uptick of screwworms in Central America has now put the Belize Agriculture Health Authority on high alert. Yesterday, Minister of Agriculture, Food Security, and Enterprise Jose Mai spoke about the need to crack down on the illegal importation of cattle, among other measures, to protect the million-dollar industry.

Jose Abelardo Mai, Minister of Agriculture: “Like any good thing it is always a threat. The threat at this time is a Screwworm.  Screwworms are now found 50 kilometers from the border of Honduras in Nicaragua. 50 kilometers from the border of Honduras in territory of Nicaragua. It means that it’s getting closer to us. At this time they are dispersing sterile flies. Like I said, we, I think we in 1994, we eradicated screwworms from Belize so  it’s been quite some years and we haven’t seen it. And so our practice is of a change. It is a matter of time if it’s not controlled there it will end up in Guatemala. There are estimates that close to a million animals move from Nicaragua all the way into Mexico and the US every year. So there are large amount of animals that are traded informally. Belize does not import animals from any Central American country. We export. So the risk that we will have it is less than the risk that other countries in Central America have. But we have to be very careful. The practices that we used to do before was treat all wounds. Once there is blood, you treat all wounds. But more than 30 years ago we stopped doing that because we eradicated worms. Today we have to bring back those practices again. Whenever the animals are in the corral they get hurt. Whenever you inject them and you hit a vein and there’s blood coming out, you have to treat that wound. When the calves are born the umbilical cord has to be treated also. It’s better to prevent than to later have problems. But the ministry, along with OIRSA and BAHA also work on a very good plan. We have a plan to implement shortly especially for the movement of cattle, monitoring and surveillance of farms, farmers need to report any case of screwworm if they have any. We are hoping that you don’t have it.”

Screwworms can also infect humans and cause death.