A sterile fly plant in Mexico will facilitate the reopening of the border with the U.S.

The sterile fly production plant -promoted with binational investment from Mexico and the U.S. to combat the screwworm plague- in the state of Chiapas (south) will provide confidence to the U.S. government to reopen the border and resume exports of Mexican cattle, project members stated.

This Tuesday, representatives from Mexico’s Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development offered a tour of the facility, located in the municipality of Metapa de Domínguez, where it was reported that they have already received their first biological material, which is the breeding stock to start the fly colony.

The project coordinator, Humberto Gómez Velásquez, stated that the weekly goal is to reach the production of one hundred million flies, which “will provide confidence to the neighboring country for the reopening of the border,” he added.

The eradication process in the U.S. and Mexico

Gómez Velásquez explained that “the eradication process must come from the north of the continent -the southern United States and northern Mexico-” through a sweep with the dispersion of sterile flies”.

The plant began its operations on June 28th and, according to authorities, by mid-July it will produce the first 28 million sterile flies each week, a figure that will increase until reaching one hundred million by the end of 2026.

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In addition, the facility will be added to the other one hundred million available from the production plant in Pacora, Panama.

“We will begin adding flies from Panama. We will be sending 1.5 million flies daily to the packaging center, either to (the Mexican city of) Tampico or Texas (USA),” assured the coordinator regarding this project, which had an investment of 57 million dollars.

For their part, Mexican scientists and engineers from the Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development are also working on the creation of a new strain of fly in Mexico.

Joint strategy

The operational coordinator of the Fly Program, José Luis Quintero, detailed that, with the use of new technologies, enough progress can be made so that “the national countryside is free of this pest.”

“Everything you are seeing here is being done by Mexico, Mexican personnel, Mexican researchers, and that gives us great pleasure, as we are developing various processes that will help make eradication faster,” he emphasized.

The sterile fly plant is part of the joint strategy between Mexico and the United States to contain the spread of the screwworm, a parasite whose larvae feed on the living tissue of warm-blooded animals, mainly livestock.

The plague reappeared in Mexico at the end of 2024, after having been eradicated in 1991, and its spread led the United States to impose temporary restrictions on imports of Mexican cattle, with losses for the livestock sector, which caused new trade frictions between both countries.

The most common cases that have been recorded on the Mexico-Guatemala border are in cattle and canines, mainly.