Metapa de Dominguez, Chiapas — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Saturday inaugurated a sterile fly production plant in Chiapas, a strategic facility aimed at combating the screwworm parasite on both sides of the border and in Central America.
“Panama, Mexico, and the United States are united in a common cause,” Sheinbaum said at the event. “This plant represents much more than infrastructure; it represents the capacity of science to offer intelligent, effective, and sustainable solutions.”
The president emphasized that the relationship with the US must be based on “very clear principles”: mutual respect, dialogue, cooperation, and recognition of sovereignty.
“From Chiapas, where Mexico begins, we send a message to the world: cooperation between sovereign nations will always be more powerful than confrontation when it comes to protecting the well-being of our peoples,” Sheinbaum said, amid ongoing tensions between the two countries.
Rollins and US Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Douglas Johnson highlighted that the plant — nearly five decades after the screwworm was first fought jointly — will allow both nations to combat the parasite again.
Rollins called Sheinbaum an “extraordinary ally” and noted that the plant, funded by the US government with an investment of $83.8 million, was built in just 12 months.
“We are trade partners, and our agricultural relationship helps feed millions of families on both sides of the border,” Rollins said. “So this screwworm problem is not just an agricultural issue; it is a food security issue.”
The facility will progressively reach a production capacity of 100 million sterile flies per week, adding to the output of the Pacora plant in Panama to reinforce the control and eradication strategy for the parasite that spreads from northern North America to Central America.
At the plant, sterile flies will be raised using “advanced technological processes” to act as a biological shield. When released, they will mate with wild flies without producing offspring, thereby “cutting off the pest’s reproduction cycle at the root,” according to officials.
“These sterile flies are to the screwworm what vaccines were in the fight against COVID,” said Julio Berdegué, coordinator and advisor for International Agrifood Affairs. “Without them, we can mitigate the problem, but only with them can we truly eradicate the pest.”
Agriculture and Rural Development Secretary Columba Jazmín López reported that authorities have inspected 5.3 million head of cattle, verified more than 84,000 shipments, and released nearly 7 billion sterile flies to date.
The plant is part of a joint Mexico-US strategy to contain the spread of the screwworm, a parasite whose larvae feed on the living tissue of warm-blooded animals, primarily livestock.
On November 21, 2024, just days after Sheinbaum took office, the first screwworm case in livestock was recorded in Chiapas. Since then, the state has become the epicenter of the outbreak, with 7,123 accumulated cases, according to agricultural authorities.
The spread led the US to impose temporary restrictions on Mexican livestock imports, causing losses for the livestock sector and new trade frictions between the two countries.
