What's a good fly?

Another Texas story caught my eye. There is a rare break between MAGA Texas and the Federal government. It concerns beef, something Texas takes very seriously.

Texas is being beset by new cases of New World Screwworm. The critters kill Texas cows. New World screwworms are actually flies whose larvae burrow into the open wounds of mammals, causing infection and even death. They were first discovered in the United States in 1923 and Texas thought they had them eradicated in the 1960's after a massive eradication campaign.

This was accomplished by releasing sterile flies among other things. Unfortunately, a facility in Panama is the only one in the world that currently makes these sterilized screwworms. 

People like Michael Kelsey, from the Oklahoma Cattleman’s Association, want at least one production facility in the U.S.

“The biggest thing we need to do right now, in our minds, is start producing more of the sterile male flies,” Kelsey said. “And in order to do that we need a couple, at least one, maybe two, perhaps even three, depending on how far along this goes, production facilities.”

A group of bipartisan lawmakers filed a bill in Congress in May that would create such a facility, but it is still awaiting a hearing.

Unfortunately, like everything else in our society, the issue has become politically polarized. Dems note the cuts that Trump has made at the USDA and the effects of climate change on the problem.

Nearly a dozen Democratic U.S. senators sent a letter to Rollins this week questioning whether job losses at the USDA have hurt food inspections and livestock safety programs.

Nearly 20% of the counties in the U.S. that started 2025 with at least one employee from the federal Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service ended the year with none, the letter said.

Repubs are blaming illegals for bringing the worm up even though there has never been a single case of a human carrier. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins wants to blame Joe Biden, because, well, they always want to blame Joe Biden.

Texas Ag Commissioner Sid Miller wants to try a different tack than the sterile flies, poison pellet bait. This interview with him is sort of priceless.

Texas Standard: Are you satisfied with how the USDA has responded so far?

Sid Miller: Well, for the most part, yes. I think they’re responding correctly.

I’m a little frustrated that I can’t get them to use the fly bait. The bait is… You don’t put it in a trap. You actually just put it out. It comes in a pellet. So you scatter the pellets out and the flies are drawn to it by an attractor. And then when they eat the pellet, of course it kills them.

They’ve used it before. I mean, it’s a USDA program that was used in 1976. We had 29,000 cases of screwworms in the fall of ’76. We put out the fly bait and we went from in the fall of ’76, 29,000 cases. In the spring of ’77, we had 39 cases. So it’s almost 100% effective.

They’re very reluctant, actually, to use the fly bait. They say it’s environmentally unsound. I keep asking why, and they say, ‘well, it would probably kill the good flies, too.’ My answer is good flies? I mean, what’s a good fly? That’s kind of like a good fire ant. I don’t care. I mean we’re going to kill some house flies, or you’re afraid we’re gonna kill some stable flies?

So I don’t know what a good fly is, but anyway, that’s the reason. I don’t think it’s a sound reason. I think it is a little ridiculous myself, but anyway, I’m going to keep working it.

I love the question and had to think about it for a second. What is a good fly?  Miller asks a good question and may have a valid point. I decided to find out if there were good flies and what the positives are to having them in our ecosystem. Noah had to put the fly pair on the ark for a reason, right?

What have I found? Well, they are excellent pollinators and the only pollinators for some types of chocolate. They also pollinate apples, strawberries, carrots, onions and bell peppersas well as black pepper and coriander.

They break down dead animals, feces, and rotting vegetation, recycling vital nutrients back into the soil. Without them we would be sitting on a big heap of poo.

They are a protein source for a huge number of species including birds, reptiles, amphibians and other insects.

The earth would be in a tragic state without flies, for all of their nagging irritation. But it leads me to a memory of an old conversation I had with Dr. Wolf once in New Mexico, the world's leading expert on mosquitos.

I asked the old doctor what the beneficial aspects to his favorite insect might be and he said something that I have never forgotten.

He said that without malaria, which the mosquito carried, vast untouched sections of the Congo and Amazon would have been overpopulated, which would have led to all sorts of horrible problems on our planet.

The universe has it pretty together and has got us this far. When so called experts try to get get in the way with their radical engineering solutions without considering tertiary reactions, watch out!