The Texas screwworm cases are a wakeup call for US biosecurity

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed June 3 what ranchers had been fearing: The New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite largely eradicated from the U.S. 60 years ago, was back. Within three weeks, 15 cases in livestock and pets have been confirmed across Texas and southeastern New Mexico.

I am a biosecurity researcher who spent a year mapping threats to U.S. crop production. To me, the screwworm outbreak in Texas is more than a livestock crisis. It is a wake-up call for all agricultural biosecurity.

Although there is plenty to criticize about the screwworm program, the USDA’s model did predict the fly’s return. Containment efforts along the border bought additional time. A coordinated response of quarantine zones, trapping, sterile-fly releases and emergency drug approvals was possible because of government preparation.

Still, we were unable to prevent its reemergence in the U.S. And screwworm is the threat we rehearsed for. What happens when the next threat arrives, one that doesn’t come with a playbook?

In research published this spring by RAND, my co-authors and I found that the U.S. biosecurity system is poorly prepared for that. Naturally occurring crop diseases not yet present in the U.S. could cause billions of dollars in losses if introduced here. Engineered pathogens delivered deliberately could be far worse.

The Corn Belt produces more than one-third of all U.S. corn and 34 percent of the world’s soybeans. Their combined export value exceeds $34 billion. But modern agricultural practices magnify their vulnerability: Tens of millions of acres are planted with a small number of high-yield varieties in rotation.

This kind of farming is efficient but also fragile. In the 1970s, when a single genetic strain dominated commercial corn farming, an outbreak of Southern corn leaf blight destroyed 15 percent of the North American crop. The crop-strain concentration that made that possible is, by some measures, more pronounced today.

Further, history shows that agricultural sabotage does not require much sophistication. In 1989, terrorists laced a few grapes exported from Chile to the U.S. with cyanide. The import suspension that followed cost Chile’s agriculture sector $330 million. In 1978, a Palestinian group claimed responsibility for injecting Israeli oranges exported to Europe with Mercury. European orange imports from Israel fell by 40 percent.

With advances in synthetic biology, novel pathogens could be engineered to kill crops or decimate harvests. Released covertly during a growing season, it could go undetected for weeks — long enough to spread beyond any containable perimeter.

The U.S. performs disease surveillance — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention monitors wastewater for COVID-19 and some other human pathogens, for instance. But screening for new crop pathogens, such as the National Plant Diagnostic Network, is minimal. Nor does the U.S. have the equivalent of the detailed screwworm playbook in place for crops.

Closing the gap doesn’t require building from scratch. It just requires leveraging systems that already exist.

First, we must expand pathogen surveillance to agriculture. Programs like the CDC’s wastewater monitoring could be widened and adapted to detect agricultural pathogens. This would represent an incremental expansion of existing infrastructure, not a new bureaucracy.

We also have to fund rapid crop pathogen detection programs. Rapid diagnostics already exist for human disease. Parallel investment in agricultural diagnostics would give first responders such as county extension agents and state plant health inspectors the ability to identify threats in the field rather than waiting for laboratory confirmation. Additional efforts could be made to establish biosecurity standards at large commercial crop operations, similar to those that exist at livestock counterparts.

We should establish an Agriculture Department rapid-response research mechanism. Modeled on the National Science Foundation’s RAPID program, this would mobilize research capacity within weeks of a novel threat emerging, not years.

And finally, we must invest in forensic capabilities. When the next outbreak occurs, we will need to determine quickly whether it was natural or deliberate. The response to each is fundamentally different. Attribution will require Agriculture Department and CDC collaboration with the departments of State and Justice and possibly the CIA.

The next agricultural biosecurity crisis probably won’t announce itself years in advance like the screwworm did. It is unlikely to arrive with a proven eradication method. It may not target a species we’ve spent decades learning to protect. And it might not be an accident.

These investments will cost money at a time when agriculture budgets are stretched, and producers face thin margins. But the math cuts decisively the other way. The Corn Belt alone generates enormous economic value. A single successful introduction of a novel pathogen — even one that reduced yields by a fraction of what the most detrimental pathogens could do — would dwarf the cost of the surveillance and research infrastructure needed to prevent it.

We insure against low-probability, high-consequence events in every other domain of national security and insist that industries take steps to keep vital parts of our economy safe.

Agriculture — our nation’s food supply — should be no different.

Tyler Hoard is an associate physical scientist at the RAND Corporation, where his research focuses on biosecurity, emerging technologies and agricultural security.

The Texas screwworm cases are a wakeup call for US biosecurity

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