<
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/20/doges-screwworm-legacy-may-be-tons-of-euthanized-cats-and-dogs/>
"Of all the things I thought the Trump administration would cause to enter the
public lexicon, I certainly did not have screwworms on my list. If you somehow
haven’t heard of this, screwworms are actually a fly that lays its eggs by
burrowing into the flesh of other animals. Those animals are mostly cattle,
sometimes household pets, and even occasionally humans. It’s a horrific
experience and can lead to death in a few weeks. We used to have an
international monitoring program in Mexico through USAID designed to stop the
problem at the source before it ever gets to America, but Elon Musk’s DOGE did
away with that program, citing it as unnecessary. Well, now screwworms are back
in Texas and surrounding states, and they put at risk $2 billion in potential
damage to the Texas economy alone. It’s bad enough that this particular
administration has decided to pull drones from patrolling the southern border
for scary illegal brown people to instead hunt for evidence of screwworm
infection in domestic cattle.
But if you don’t think all of that is bad enough of a look for what DOGE and
the administration did to cause this, what if we had thousands of dead puppies
and kittens in the news instead?"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
