USDA Opens Livestock Insects Research Laboratory to Combat Livestock Pests

KERRVILLE, Texas — The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) opened the Knipling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory, a laboratory facility designed to provide tools and technologies to manage and eliminate the invasive fly and tick pests that threaten the United States cattle industry.

The new 52,000‑square‑foot facility features laboratory spaces, cattle facilities and a genomics core to drive research that delivers control technologies for the U.S. livestock industry. Other on-site research opportunities will involve improved surveillance and trapping tools, novel insecticides and acaricides, enhanced pesticide delivery techniques for cattle and wildlife, sustainable treatments to prevent and mitigate outbreaks of invasive/quarantine arthropod species, improved approaches to combat pesticide resistance and insect genomics to identify pest vulnerabilities, said USDA.

The facility also houses two ARS research units: the Livestock Arthropod Pest Research Unit and the Veterinary Pest Genetics Research Unit. These units aim to improve the health, sustainability and profitability of U.S. livestock production and protect the U.S food supply from arthropod pests, including biting flies, ticks and the New World screwworm. On-site research aims to help eradicate other ticks and blood feeding flies that can harm, infect and kill cattle.

“This new laboratory will equip our researchers with advanced tools to combat the most destructive invasive insects already impacting the United States, as well as those posing future threats at our borders,” said ARS Administrator Joon Park. “The important ARS research conducted here in Kerrville will continue to play a vital role in protecting and strengthening the future of the U.S. cattle industry.”

For 80 years, research has been completed at previous ARS laboratory facilities in the Kerrville area, said USDA. This includes:

• Research on the biology of control of New World screwworm that led to its eradication from the U.S. in the 1970s.
• Development and evaluation of novel pesticides like macrocyclic lactones for controlling biting flies and ticks on cattle and wildlife.
• Sequencing the genome of more than 25 livestock arthropod pest species.

The laboratory is named after two influential USDA researchers: Drs. Edward F. Knipling and Raymond C. Bushland.

In 1937, Knipling first developed the theory that screwworms could be controlled using the sterile male technique. In the early 1950s, Bushland successfully demonstrated that the theory worked and that viable sterile male screwworms could be produced and used to control screwworm populations. This biocontrol technique, known as sterile insect technique (SIT), became the keystone component of the strategy that eventually led to the eradication of the screwworm from the U.S., Mexico and Central America, said USDA.

Nearly 80 years later, SIT is still being employed to fight New World screwworm in Mexico and Central America in an effort to keep the insect from reestablishing itself in the U.S.

“The brand new Knipling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory will allow us to research and find new active measures to keep current and future threats away from our borders,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins. “We have taken extraordinary actions to keep New World screwworm out of the United States, and this lab will help us accelerate our offensive efforts to drive this pest further away from our borders.”