By Leah Douglas and Cassandra Garrison
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Thursday said Mexico has not adequately enacted protocols to curb the spread of New World screwworm, a sign of tension between the two countries as they navigate the northward march of the pest.
Rollins blamed a recent screwworm detection less than 70 miles (113 km) from the U.S. border on Mexico’s failure to curb cattle movements and tend to fly traps meant to reduce the wild population of screwworm flies, which infest and can kill livestock if untreated.
Screwworm has not yet crossed the U.S. border, according to officials, but poses a multibillion-dollar risk to the U.S. beef industry. The U.S. has kept its border mostly closed to Mexican cattle imports since May.
The outbreak has heightened tensions between the countries ahead of a planned review of the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement and rattled their livestock and beef sectors.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture on September 21 said it had learned of the case in Nuevo Leon, which borders Texas.
Within hours, USDA had sent staff to the region, Rollins said on Thursday at the Ag Outlook Forum in Kansas City, Missouri.
“Unfortunately, what we found is Mexico has failed to enforce proper cattle movement controls in infected regions and is not tending to fly traps daily as promised, which hinder our real-time detection capabilities. This is unacceptable,” Rollins said.
She said that reopening the border to livestock trade is contingent on total compliance with agreed-upon surveillance protocols.
Spokespeople for the Mexican secretary of agriculture and President Claudia Sheinbaum did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Sheinbaum on Wednesday said that Mexico had not been notified by the USDA of any change to the expectation that the U.S. will reopen its border before November and that controlling the movement of livestock within Mexico is complicated.
The U.S. has invested $21 million in a facility in southern Mexico to produce sterile flies that are released to reduce the mating population of wild flies.
(Reporting by Leah Douglas in Washington and Cassandra Garrison in Mexico City; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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