SWAHRF Seeking Funds To Begin
Screwworm Plant Construction

The Southwest Animal Health Research Foundation, which spearheaded and still closely monitors screwworm eradication, is trying to raise $250,000 over the next 60 days to cover "up-front expenses" for a sterile fly production plant to be constructed at Panama City and leased back to the U.S.-Panama Screwworm Commission.

The long-sought plant would provide flies to maintain a screwworm-free barrier at Panama that could keep the flesh-eating maggots from ever re-infesting the Northern Hemisphere.

The plant is years behind schedule, largely because of government turf battles and the low priority accorded it by various federal agencies and departments. In the interim, the eradication program has had to rely on an increasingly undependable fly-rearing facility at Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico. Organized labor unrest, guerilla activity, materials theft and general sabotage have shut the Mexico plant down repeatedly, even to the extent of endangering the lives of U.S. overseers. That has delayed and occasionally jeopardized the crucial push to eliminate screwworms hemisphere-wide.

Budgetary restraints have also hampered the program, though ironically, the costs are expected to plummet once the eradication effort itself is complete and program responsibilities are reduced to maintaining a barrier zone of sterile flies. Longrange, supporters envision South American countries cooperating on their own eradication effort, which could eventually squeeze screwworms out of existence on both continents.

Either way, the Panama barrier is the key, and backers see the current plan to build a plant and lease it back to the joint government program as a crucial window of opportunity to get hemispheric eradication back on schedule. The longer the Panama plant is delayed, they point out, the greater the chance that problems at the Mexican plant could wreck the program entirely.

That would waste decades of effort and expense at a point heartwrenching close to completion. It would also lead to a devastating screwworm reinfestation in a United States that is no longer capable of coping with it.

Tax-deductible contributions may be sent to SWAHRF treasurer Jerry C. Puckett at Box 1506, Fort Stockton, TX 79735. Further information is available from SWAHRF president Edwin Ketchum at (580) 255-9212.