Yes—Washington really is getting ready to drop millions of flies from the sky.

But the headline you may have seen (“Panama is the only fly factory!” “The pest is already at the U.S. border!”) leaves out—and in one case gets wrong—several crucial details. Here is what our digging uncovered.

The Surprising Truth We Found First

Fact-check revelation: A second sterile-fly plant in Chiapas, Mexico has been churning out up to 100 million insects a week since April 2025—so Panama is no longer the lone source. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has funded an $8.5 million dispersal hub in South Texas, not yet a full-blown production factory.

Why it matters: The extra Mexican supply shortens delivery routes, speeds up weekly releases over northern Mexico and buys time before the screwworm reaches the United States.

The Hollywood-Style Plan, Stripped of Hype

1. Raise male New World screwworm flies.
2. Sterilize them with precise doses of radiation.
3. Load them into chilled cartons.
4. Release them from small planes at dawn so they drift down like black confetti.
5. Wild female screwworms mate once in their life. When they choose a sterile male, the line ends there—no flesh-eating larvae, no next generation.

USDA scientists call it the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT)—a method that wiped the pest out of the United States by 1966 and gradually pushed a “fly-free buffer zone” all the way to Panama by the late 1990s.

Meet the Enemy: A Larva That Eats Live Flesh

• Species: Cochliomyia hominivorax—literally “man-eater of new world.”
• Each female lays 200–300 eggs in open wounds on livestock, pets, wildlife and (rarely) humans.
• Maggots hatch, burrow deeper, enlarge the wound and can kill an animal in days.
• There is no vaccine, no long-term drug, only surgical removal of the larvae.
(Sources: CDC)

Texas A&M entomologist Philipp Kaufman told reporters that larvae “burrow into tissue immediately,” a statement consistent with the paraphrase cited in German media—even if the exact wording differs.

How Close Is the Threat, Really?

Original article: “The fly stands right at the U.S. border.”
Reality: Latest confirmed cases are roughly 700 miles (≈1 100 km) south, in the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Veracruz.
Officials at CNN and USDA stress the same thing: the pest has not yet crossed into the United States—but the window is shrinking.

What the Original Story Got Right

✔️ The United States will carpet-bomb northern Mexico (and the border, if needed) with sterile males.
✔️ Screwworm cases exploded in Central America after January 2023—6 500 detections in Panama alone.
✔️ An unchecked U.S. outbreak could cost Texas cattle producers an estimated $1.8 billion and push beef prices even higher.
(Sources: Reuters)

What Needed Correction or Nuance

Why Drop Insects From Planes Instead of Using Pesticides?

• Adult screwworm flies roam miles to locate bleeding animals—spray programs miss too many.
• Females mate once; SIT exploits that biological bottleneck.
• Cost-benefit math: for every federal dollar spent on SIT in the 1960s, ranchers saved more than 14 dollars in livestock losses.
(Historical data: screwworm.org)

Unanswered Questions We’re Still Tracking

1. Will USDA approve a full-scale production plant on U.S. soil—and if so, when?
2. Can releases keep pace if the pest jumps the 700-mile gap faster than models predict?
3. How will climate change alter screwworm survival zones over the next decade?

We will update readers as documents, budget hearings and field reports emerge.

The Bottom Line

The air-drop plan is real, science-backed and already under way over northern Mexico.
Yet two widespread beliefs—that Panama is the only source of sterile flies and that the screwworm has already reached Texas—do not hold up under scrutiny.

Understanding those nuances matters, because panic can spread faster than any fly—and good policy needs good facts to take flight.