Screwworm border closure fuels beef boom in Mexico, gloom in Texas

A cow stands in the Lubbock Feeders feedlot, that has 350 acres of feedyard pens, in Lubbock, Texas, U.S., April 22, 2026. REUTERS/Annie Rice

LUBBOCK, Texas/SALTILLO, Mexico, June 6 - Lubbock Feeders has been fattening cattle in West Texas since Dwight Eisenhower was U.S. president. Now, row upon row of pens sit empty.

The 70-year-old feedlot in Lubbock, Texas, is on the brink of closure after a halt to U.S. imports of Mexican livestock last year dried up the supply that formerly accounted for most of the cattle it raised, according to one of its owners.

The U.S. government closed the border to Mexican livestock a year ago, hoping to keep out New World screwworm, a flesh-eating pest that Mexican authorities have struggled to control. This week, the first case of screwworm in 60 years was confirmed on a Texas cattle ranch, representing a fresh challenge to the U.S. beef industry, already hampered by scarce supplies, President Donald Trump's trade policies and a pernicious drought.

It's a brighter story in Mexico's northern border state of Coahuila, where farmers who used to send live cattle north are now exporting beef to the United States. Rancher Enrique García's pens were recently full of black cattle eagerly awaiting an afternoon feeding. He has doubled his workforce, including to fatten cattle and process beef, with aspirations to sell his product to U.S. consumers.

In Texas, the nation's biggest cattle-producing state, closing the border has forced the $100 billion U.S. beef industry to contract. But in Mexico - where screwworm has infested nearly 28,000 animals - the beef industry has capitalized on the setback to build up its own feedlots to keep cows longer and prepare them for slaughter, as well as expand processing facilities. Moving up the supply chain like this can be profitable. In the first four months of 2026, Mexican beef exports to the U.S. soared.

"If they end up feeding and processing them in Mexico, how are we winning?" said Kyle Williams, manager and part owner of Lubbock Feeders. "We're giving this to them on a silver platter, the feeding industry. That's work, that's labor, that's people that are not getting to do it here in the U.S."

U.S. beef prices set record highs this year as domestic cattle supplies dropped to a 75-year low because of the ban on cattle imports from Mexico and drought conditions that fueled wildfires across the Plains and drove American producers to slash their herds.

The U.S. formerly imported more than a million cattle a year from Mexico, representing about 4% to 5% of all cattle sold for U.S. beef p