Flesh-eating parasite rattles Mexican cattle producers

The suspension of live cattle imports of the United States from Mexico, after two years of violent drought, hit his family on the northern border on the northern border with the farm owner Martín Ibarra Vargas, which he hoped to put on better foundations on the northern border.

Like his father and his grandfather in front of him, Ibarra Vargas grown cattle in the roasted territory of Sonora, a state of sharing a long border with the United States in the northwest of Mexico.

His family has previously faced punishing droughts, but now he faced a new trouble: the new world screw wolf, a parasite eating meat.

US agricultural officials, Southern Mexico and crawled to the north-eating meat-eating worries in July-the third suspension of the last eight months in July-stopped live cattle.

Vida worm is a cochliomyia hominivorax fly larvae, which can invade the tissues of the warm -blooded animal, including humans.

Parasite enters the skin of animals and causes serious damage and lesions that may be fatal.

Infected animals are a serious threat to herds.

The US Department of Agriculture calls it a “destructive pest, and in June it pose a threat to our“ livestock industry, economy and food supply chain ”.

He took other steps to keep it away from the United States, which had eliminated decades ago.

As part of its strategy, the United States is preparing to produce billions of sterile flies and release them in Mexico and Southern Texas.

The aim is to match sterile men with women in the wild nature.

The live cattle ban of the United States jumps and also for the importation of bison.

Last year, the drought producing $ 1.2 billion (A1.9 billion dollars) for Mexico and a farm industry, especially with a cattle export business, reached a farm sector.

This year, the Mexican farm owners exported less than 200,000 cattle, less than half of what they had historically sent.

For Ibarra Vargas, who was considered a relatively small farm owner with Sonora’s cattle -based standards, not being able to send the calves along the border rethink everything.

The repeated bans in the Mexican cows by US officials pushed their family to beekeeping, to grow sheep and to sell cow’s milk.

What he earns is only part of his earnings by exporting live cattle, but he tries to keep it in simple times.

“Tiempos de Vacas Flacas” – Times of Lean Cows – Calls them.

At least lets us keep mating, dedi he said, 57 -year -old, with a white cowboy hat on his head.

The farm owners in Sonora had to look for new markets, even if the parasitic fly intensified their efforts to enter their states.

In the last two months, they sold more than 35,000 mature cows in Mexico.

“We couldn’t wait anymore,” said Juan Carlos Ochoa, President of Sonora Regional Cattle Union.

He said that these sales were “35 percent lower price difference compared to the export value of a cow”.

This is difficult when the cattle meat prices in the United States increase.

The United States first suspended its cattle imports last November.

Since then, more than 2258 screw worm cases have been identified in Mexico.

Treatment requires a mixture of manual removal of maggots, healing lesions on cows and a mixture of anti-parasite drugs.

Some farm owners also started sales of retail beef through the luxury butcher shops called “meat boutiques”.

For example, there are other foreign markets, such as Japan, but selling steaks decorated with vacuum in the Pacific is a significant job than applying calves to US feed pieces. The key is not easy.

As the calves ran from one end of a small corrine to another, Ibarra Vargas said that he still did not understand that he would still survive for a long time to not be able to send them to the United States.

The last two -year drought has reduced cattle stocks and forced to borrow three generations to save the surviving small family farm.

Juan Carlos Anaya, Director of Agricultural Markets Consultancy Group, fell two percent of the drought in the cattle inventory of Mexico last year.

Anaya, exporting Mexican farm owners, the United States in Southern Mexico, the more strict health and sanitation measures were taken to separate from cattle export states in the North, he said.

Ibarra Vargas, who tested that their children are not interested in continuing their family business, said, “We are running out of time,” he said.

Bir For a farm owner who doesn’t have a market or money to continue to feed his calves, it is a matter of time before saying, “You know, as far as I go”.

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