Cattle wander through a field on June 6, 2026 in La Pryor, Texas.
Joel Ángel Juárez | fake images
The arrival in Texas of the invasive New World screwworm, a parasitic fly whose larvae burrow into the flesh of live, warm-blooded animals, could exacerbate existing inflationary pain for Americans already struggling with high beef prices.
Carmen Smith and her fiancé, Jim, moved to San Diego County from North Carolina in late 2024. They have managed to maintain the higher cost of living in California overall, but she notes that beef prices have increased since last year and fears they will likely go up even more now.
“We're going to eat more chicken and seafood, although I'm not a fan of the latter,” Smith said.
“I don't make steak three times a week anymore, but my fiancé is going to have to give up steak for a while,” Smith said.
Consumers got some relief with the just-released Consumer Price Index report, which tracks inflation across a wide range of goods and services. Ground beef prices fell -1.27% in May, according to the CPI report, but that came after a 2.7% increase in April, and beef prices remain up 12.9% year over year.
Switching to more affordable cuts of meat is how Americans have dealt with past periods of beef inflation, said Golan Haiem, founder of Destination Wagyu, a Los Angeles-based high-end beef brand that offers a subscription service that delivers premium Wagyu beef directly to consumers and restaurants. Their most popular item is a $175 ribeye.
“Chicken has always been the valuable substitute for beef,” Haiem said. “What I can see are promotions on things like chicken, ground beef and cheaper cuts of meat. The more premium cuts of meat will be more likely to see price increases,” Haiem said.
Haiem doesn't expect higher prices to end anytime soon, given the effect of historically low cattle supplies in the U.S., but if the outbreak is contained quickly, already volatile beef prices may at least stabilize at current levels.
“Right now we are at a 75-year low for cattle herd numbers in the United States, and this doesn't help because screwworm further disrupts ranchers expanding their herds,” Haiem said.
Screwworm can cause painful, life-threatening wounds without treatment, and the pest poses a risk to livestock, wildlife, pets, and, in rare cases, people. Despite health and economic concerns, government officials and industry executives have said there is no threat to the food supply or public health.
Colin Woodall, chief executive of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the industry's oldest and largest trade group, emphasized the security of the country's beef supply and said the screwworm's arrival was not a surprise.
“We've been anticipating this for some time. It's not a shock to supply. It's a pest and like many other pests, we fight it,” Woodall said, adding that ranchers have products available to treat livestock and keep them healthy.
“This will have no overall impact on beef supply,” Woodall said. He pointed to a similar fight with the fly in the 1960s, noting that this time there are many more tools to combat it.
Last December, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted conditional approval to a treatment from Merck Animal Health for the prevention and treatment of new world screwworm. That's one of many treatment options on the market, some of which the USDA has expedited access amid current concerns.
“We have products that can go in and kill the pest,” Woodall said. Unlike bird flu, which spreads from bird to bird and forces farmers to cull entire flocks, he said there is no scenario in which screwworm would trigger a mass cull of livestock.
“This is not a virus, it's not a disease, it's just a small pest, a larva that lands in a calf's wound, for example, and it can be treated,” USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said in an interview on CNBC's “Squawk Box” this week.
Friction has arisen between the Trump administration and Texas state officials this week, with Rollins on Monday calling Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller “not serious” after criticizing the USDA's response to the threat.
While treatments may work on a case-by-case basis, medications cannot eradicate screwworm.
Woodall said the best defense against flies is releasing sterile males into the wild. “That's the best technology we have. Put sterile flies in the wild – the female fly mates once in her life and she mates with a sterile male, and that stops the spread,” Woodall said.
About 500 million sterile flies need to be released per week to stop the spread, far more than the roughly 100 million per week currently deployed. A sterile fly facility is currently being built in Texas, which will allow the United States to increase production. It expects capacity to reach 500 million per week by 2027.
Livestock costs will increase
But the current situation means an additional cost for farmers, who must absorb additional labor, veterinary fees and monitoring expenses.
“All of that comes from your results as a producer, so there will be a significant economic impact for ranchers,” Woodall said.
Any price increase ultimately occurs after the meat leaves the farm. “Demand for beef is at its highest level in 40 years. If you're a rancher in Texas today, you can't determine what the price of steak is,” Woodall said.
Brandon Parsons, an economist at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, predicts higher prices for consumers, but said that, at least so far, consumers have not pushed back. If prices continue to rise, bearish trading will occur. What's happening with beef right now, Parsons said, seems straight out of college economics textbooks.
“When supply and demand stay relatively stable, prices go up, and that's economics 101, and that's exactly what we're seeing,” Parsons said, noting that consumers haven't abandoned beef even as supply shrinks.
While tariffs that impacted beef prices have recently been relaxed, the damage has already been done, with the price pain compounded by the smallest cattle herd in 75 years due to prolonged droughts in several regions, Parsons said, and the suspension of livestock imports from Mexico.
The suspension of live cattle imports from Mexico has removed approximately 1.2 million heads of feedlot cattle from the annual supply chain, sending feeder cattle futures at record levels. The supply curve has already shifted far to the left and the screwworm threatens to push it even further.
“The screwworm outbreak is a potentially serious supply shock at a time when beef supplies are already historically low,” Parsons said. “Since this possible screwworm outbreak could cause a larger supply shock on top of the existing supply shortage, prices could rise further,” he added.
How all this plays out in the grocery aisle remains uncertain and will depend in part on how much consumers want that steak or roast.
Tony Manker, senior director of meat and seafood for St. Louis-based Schuck's, which operates more than 100 grocery stores in the Midwest, said the company is watching the situation closely but believes the impact on meat prices will be minor. “The impact should be isolated to individual animals that become infected, not entire herds, and treatments are readily available so the impact on supply should be minimal,” Manker said.
While he said it's true that ranchers will have higher treatment and prevention costs, and that those costs could be passed on to retail consumers, he expects more customers to stop selling meat at the same time. “That could easily offset any increase,” he said. The real problem with inflation in the meat market, according to Manker, remains fuel, which he believes will have more impact on meat prices than the New World screwworm.
Parsons predicts that grocery stores will increase meat prices, but said it may not be as dramatic as the recent inflationary rise seen in egg prices (which have since dropped dramatically), as eggs tend to be more price inelastic due to their role as a baking staple.
“Although there are other meat substitutes, many people prefer beef, which will keep demand relatively stable,” Parsons said. However, there will come a point when people will start substituting beef for chicken or buying smaller cuts, limiting the extent to which grocers can raise prices without reducing the quantity demanded, he added.
“Despite supply constraints and record retail prices, American consumers have shown some insensitivity to meat price increases so far, but there is a price point at which substitution increases,” Parsons said.
Chicken and pork are the direct beneficiaries when the price of a good increases and consumers tend to opt for substitutes. General inflation and its impact on consumers' disposable income will also influence these decisions, he said.
For some, disposable income for beef is already declining.
Judi Gawor, a senior living on a fixed income in Hendersonville, North Carolina, is among those watching the current screwworm situation closely. “I definitely fear that beef prices will rise even more than they already have because of the screwworm debacle,” Gawor said, noting that in today's world, he believes any excuse to increase commodity prices will cause this to happen. “If meat prices continue to rise, we will eat a lot of chicken,” he said.
—Annika Kim Constantino contributed to this report.
