Mexican ag minister to discuss with US counterpart opening border to cattle amid screwworm outbreak

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexico’s agriculture minister will travel to Washington next week with the aim of reaching an agreement on the reopening of the border to Mexican cattle amid an outbreak of the flesh-eating screwworm parasite, President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Thursday.

Mexican Agriculture Minister Julio Berdegue will meet with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins to discuss plans for the border, which the U.S. has kept closed to Mexican cattle imports since May.

“We hope he can return with an agreement on the border opening,” Sheinbaum said in her regular press conference.   

The screwworm, a pest that burrows into the flesh of warm-blooded animals, often killing livestock if left untreated, has moved northward through Central America since late last year and deep into Mexico, straining relations with the United States, Mexico’s biggest trading partner, and rattling the livestock sectors of both countries.

Rollins has publicly criticized Mexico’s response to the outbreak. Mexico confirmed its first cases of screwworm infections in animals in the state of Nuevo Leon, which borders the U.S., in recent weeks but has said they were contained and resolved.

Meanwhile, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is urging U.S. cattle ranchers to lower beef prices while several agencies announced an effort to rebuild the country’s decimated cattle herd. The White House also said on Thursday that Trump is quadrupling the country’s low-tariff imports of Argentine beef in his attempt to lower grocery store beef prices, angering U.S. ranchers. 

(Reporting by Cassandra Garrison and Brendan O’Boyle; Editing by Richard Chang)