The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has invoked emergency powers that allow the Food and Drug Administration to issue rapid Emergency Use Authorizations for veterinary drugs aimed at treating or preventing infestations of the New World screwworm. No cases have been confirmed in the United States for decades, but regulators said fast-track approvals are necessary because the flesh-eating parasite has advanced through Mexico and now threatens the domestic cattle herd. The policy shift comes alongside a broader containment campaign led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which last week earmarked up to $750 million to build a sterile-fly production plant at Moore Air Force Base near Edinburg, Texas. When completed, the facility is expected to release about 300 million sterile male flies a week—triple existing global output—and is supplemented by a $100 million programme for traps, lures and border patrols. Washington halted imports of live cattle, horses and bison from Mexico in July after the pest was found roughly 370 miles south of the border. Ranchers warn that an outbreak could devastate Texas’s $15 billion cattle industry and lift already-record U.S. beef prices. The screwworm, eradicated in the United States in the 1970s, has caused at least five human deaths from myiasis in Central America this year and was recently detected in Mexican herds for the first time in a generation. Officials said emergency drug authorisations will give veterinarians interim tools while the fly factory is built, a process expected to take two to three years. The FDA is reviewing literature on existing antiparasitic products and reaching out to foreign manufacturers as it prepares for potential U.S. cases. While health authorities maintain that the immediate risk to people remains low, they characterised the threat to livestock and the food supply as significant enough to warrant the unprecedented measures.