In June 2026, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed a case of New World screwworm in Texas, a claim (archived) circulated online that Department of Government Efficiency cuts caused the once-eradicated parasite to return to the U.S.
DOGE was the name of tech entrepreneur Elon Musk's government cost-cutting group whose work dominated headlines early in Trump's second presidency.
One such claim came from Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who wrote on X:
Trump & Elon Musk got rid of the USAID program that helped contain screwworms to Central America.
Now, thanks to them, our beef is being infected with parasites.
We're all paying the price for this insane, far-right radical extremism.
Trump & Elon Musk got rid of the USAID program that helped contain screwworms to Central America.
Now, thanks to them, our beef is being infected with parasites.
We're all paying the price for this insane, far-right radical extremism. https://t.co/xpKNxHad0b— Rep. Jim McGovern (@RepMcGovern) June 8, 2026
Screwworm is a parasite whose larvae feeds on the living tissue of warm-blooded animals. Such infestations can cause painful, foul-smelling wounds in animals and people that can lead to tissue damage and death, if not treated.
By June 10, 2026, the USDA had confirmed seven cases of screwworm in animals in New Mexico and Texas. Neither the USDA nor the Centers for Disease Control had confirmed any human cases.
Claims that DOGE cuts caused the June 2026 screwworm outbreak also circulated on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived).
The claim was unproven at the time of this writing.
It appeared to come from reporting by Agri-Pulse, an outlet focussed on agriculture, food and energy policy news in the U.S. An Agri-Pulse report from March 2025 cited an anonymous source that said DOGE cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development's funding for the Food and Agriculture Organization, which is part of the United Nations, "killed" programs "monitoring and containing" screwworm in Central America.
Snopes does not rely on anonymous sources. Agri-Pulse's article was published more than a year before the June 2026 screwworm outbreak in the U.S. and did not suggest a connection between DOGE's cuts and any future outbreak. A list of USAID funding cuts that DOGE allegedly sent to Congress in March 2025 did not specifically say it cut anti-screwworm programs run by the FAO. Other reporting that suggested DOGE cuts may have caused the screwworm outbreak referred back to Agri-Pulse's reporting, which did not directly suggest that was the case.
Snopes contacted the Agri-Pulse journalist Oliver Ward to ask for his anonymous source's credentials and the FAO to confirm the information in Ward's March 2025 report. We also contacted Rep. McGovern to ask how he evidenced his claim about the connection between DOGE cuts and the new screwworm outbreak. We await replies to our queries.
In the meantime, due to a lack of primary sources or official confirmation, we leave this claim unrated.
DOGE savings doc suggests general FAO cuts
In early 2025, Politico released a 281-page document that reportedly detailed DOGE's cancelation of more than 5,300 USAID grants in the months leading up to March 21, 2025.
DOGE had reportedly sent this document to the U.S. Congress. Agri-Pulse and Devex, a news outlet focussed on global development, both referenced a document containing identical information to the one Politico shared in their reporting.
Agri-Pulse reported that the program that monitored and contained screwworm in Central America, which its anonymous source said DOGE canceled, was part of the FAO's Global Health Security Program. DOGE canceled a $250 million grant to this program, according to Agri-Pulse and the group's own "Wall of Receipts" list of savings.
Politico's document similarly showed that DOGE had terminated a grant, titled, "FAO/GHS New Agreement-PIO," that it estimated would cost $250 million. According to USAspending.gov, a government website that tracks and publishes federal spending, the actual grant promised $165.9 million to the FAO between September 2022 and September 2027.
That grant did not show as terminated or canceled on USAspending.gov, but according to that database the FAO had not received money from the grant since December 2024, shortly before DOGE said it canceled it. According to USAspending.gov, the federal government had already paid $68.4 million of the grant at that time.
It was unclear why DOGE estimated the $165.9 million grant would end up costing the U.S. government $250 million — almost $100 million more than the actual obligated amount.
Neither Politico's document nor the USAspending.gov listing said which specific FAO programs the grant would fund.
According to its website, the FAO trains local veterinarians, strengthens biosecurity and prevents spread in
It was unclear whether or how the FAO funding DOGE cut affected the spread of screwworm into the U.S.
USDA ramped up own anti-screwworm effort
The USDA announced renewed efforts to prevent the spread of screwworm into the U.S. in June 2025 after Mexico reported a fresh outbreak of the parasite.
These efforts included building a new facility to produce millions of sterilized male screwworm flies. This biological pest control method, called Sterile Insect Technique, lowers population sizes by releasing sterile male flies to breed with wild females, resulting in eggs that do not hatch.
The USDA praised the method as "one of the most important and proven tools" to combat screwworm and announced it would build a new dispersal facility at Moore Air Base, near the southern U.S. border in Texas, to disperse sterile flies into Mexico. Construction on that facility, which would supplement existing ones in Panama and Mexico, finished in February 2026.
In January 2026, the USDA continued to fund anti-screwworm measures as it announced it would make $100 million in federal funding available to "support innovative projects that enhance sterile NWS fly production, strengthen preparedness and response strategies, and safeguard U.S. agriculture, animal health, and trade."
The USDA announced in April 2026 it would build a sterile fly production facility at Moore Air Base in Texas that could produce up to 300 million sterile screwworm flies per week.
In sum ...
Though it appeared DOGE did cancel funding to the FAO, which works to monitor and control outbreaks of screwworm, in 2025, it was not possible based on the available evidence to conclude that the canceled grant directly caused the outbreak in the U.S. or to determine how it might have affected the FAO's work to contain the parasite in Central America.
The USDA renewed the U.S. government's own efforts to contain and combat screwworm in the months after DOGE reportedly canceled funding to the FAO. The federal government broke ground on the construction of two new sterile fly dispersing facilities and made funding available for innovations in the field.
It was unclear exactly how screwworm spread to the U.S. in June 2026. An investigation into a previous outbreak in the Florida Keys in 2016 stated that larvae could be carried on humans, animals or products that entered the U.S. either legally or illegally
Boats or other modes of transport might also carry the larvae, or flies might cross sizable distances over water. The USDA never established which pathway caused the 2016 outbreak in the Florida Keys, and it was contained by March 2017 after
For further reading, Snopes previously investigated various rumors related to USAID funding.