A cattle parasite Alaska will never see could still cost Alaskans

New World screwworm cannot survive an Alaska winter, and the state has almost no cattle to lose. What Alaska has is a grocery bill built almost entirely on beef raised somewhere else, at the far end of a supply chain where every disruption arrives as price.

That is the stake in legislation a House subcommittee took up Tuesday. The SAFE Cattle Act would require the Agriculture and Interior departments — which currently run separate tracks on the pest — to sign a formal coordination agreement within 180 days, setting up joint surveillance, shared eradication protocols, and yearly reports to Congress. A 1976 Texas outbreak cost an estimated $732 million in livestock losses.

The split matters because the parasite does not respect the line between the two agencies' jurisdictions. Jared Blankenship of the Texas Farm Bureau told the subcommittee that ranchers can manage their own herds but not the wildlife moving across the same ground. "I can control my livestock," he said. "Wildlife I cannot control." He said sterile fly releases remain the most effective tool, and that eradication depends on cooperation from Mexico.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., said the monitoring programs meant to catch the pest at the border had been dismantled before it crossed. Those programs, she said, "were gutted."

The bill awaits action by the full House Natural Resources Committee.