The responsibility to insure we have safe abundant food is no small task. Having served I think 9 years on the US Secretary of Agriculture’s Foreign Animal and Poultry Disease committee I saw how big a job it was to protect our food and animals. It not only takes the US department of Agriculture but Food and Drug Administration, Home Land Security and all of local, state and federal governments.
I can remember port of entry inspectors telling about people trying to bring in their special meat, some knowing and understanding the risk and hiding meat in boxes marked clothes or making meat look like cigars. Most people bringing in possible contaminated food products, plants and animals just do not understand the risk foreign animal and plant diseases could cause to our food supply. Contaminated Food products, all imported animals and plants have the potential to bring diseases, parasites and other invasive species in to our country.
One of the biggest threats to US animals today is New World Screwworm.
Screwworms have been found 370 miles south of the US Mexico border. The pest can infest livestock and wildlife causing them to carry maggots that burrow into the skin of living animals, causing serious and often fatal damage.
The US imports around I million head of cattle from Mexico each year. There are other animals and Plants being brought in also. The flesh eating screwworm was eradicated from the US in the mid nineteen sixties.
US Ag. Secretary Brooks Rollins has closed the southern border to livestock imports to protect the US from being infected.
The Mexico’s government said it has started to build a $51 million facility in the south of Mexico as part of an effort to combat the screwworm infestation. The US is helping to pay for the sterile fly plant. The plant will produce 100 million sterile screwworm flies per week when completed in 2026. The release of sterile flies reduces the reproducing population of wild flies and is key to controlling the pest.

This is just one area our government is involved in to protect our food supply.
In my book “Your Food – My Adventure” you can read about efforts to keep our food safe and abundant. You can go to Amazon audible and listen to Stu Allis read the book.