The Pest That Came Back and the Milk Movement Washington Can't Stop

Hey folks, Raw milk used to be the kind of thing people whispered about at farm stands. Now it's in grocery stores across more than 30 states, a bill is moving through Congress to lift the federal interstate ban, and producers in Arizona are selling out on delivery day before stores can even stock the shelves. And the screwworm update nobody wanted: the threat we covered at the southern border crossed. It is now confirmed inside Texas.

THE FLESH-EATING PEST THE U.S. SPENT 60 YEARS KEEPING OUT IS BACK IN TEXAS

If you've been following the screwworm situation at the southern border, here is the update nobody wanted: it crossed. On June 3, 2026, USDA confirmed a New World screwworm case in a cow in Zavala County, Texas, the first confirmed infection on U.S. soil in roughly 60 years. The fly's larvae burrow into the living flesh of warm-blooded animals and, if left untreated, kill the host. The U.S. eradicated this pest in 1966 through a decades-long sterile fly release program, one of the most effective pest control campaigns in American agricultural history. A second case was confirmed within days, about 5.6 miles away. Seven total detections had been confirmed on U.S. soil as of mid-June.

USDA APHIS activated its New World Screwworm Response Playbook the moment the first case was confirmed. That means quarantines, movement restrictions, accelerated sterile-fly releases, expanded border trapping, and intensified livestock surveillance across the Southwest. USDA has sterile-fly dispersal operations running in Mexico and South Texas, with a larger production facility under construction at Moore Air Base near Edinburg, Texas, expected to produce roughly 300 million sterile flies per week when it opens in 2027. The sterile male fly technique is the same method that worked in 1966. The question is whether USDA can deploy it fast enough to contain what has already crossed the border.

If you run cattle in Texas or anywhere in the Southwest, you need to know what a New World screwworm infestation looks like before you have a problem. Wounds that do not heal. Larvae visible in the wound. An odor that gets worse, not better, with standard treatment. The fly is attracted to any open wound on a living animal, including minor injuries that would normally resolve on their own. Report any suspicious wounds to your state veterinarian or USDA APHIS immediately.

THE RAW MILK FIGHT IS NO LONGER FRINGE, AND WASHINGTON IS SCRAMBLING TO CATCH UP

For most of the past century, raw milk in this country was either banned outright or barely tolerated, something you could maybe buy at the farm gate if you knew the right person. That picture has changed substantially. More than 30 states now allow raw milk sales in some form, demand is running ahead of supply in most of them, and 2026 has produced a wave of state legislative action that shows no sign of slowing.

The push is coming from multiple directions at once. Young mothers who distrust ultra-processed food. Fitness-focused consumers who want whole, unaltered dairy. Immigrant communities for whom raw or fermented dairy is culturally standard. The Interstate Milk Freedom Act of 2026, currently before Congress, would prohibit federal interference with interstate transport of raw milk between states that have both legalized it, a provision that would have seemed unlikely a decade ago.

Raw milk producers report they can barely keep stock on shelves. Prices above $10 a gallon are common. Some markets see $20 a gallon and still sell out on delivery day. Rick Anglin, who has been selling raw milk at Sprouts stores across Arizona since 2014, says customers wait at the shelf for his delivery truck and grab bottles before the store manager has finished stocking them. This is not a niche market. It is a category in formation, and the farmers who got in early are the ones writing the terms right now.

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This isn't financial advice. I'm just a farmer with an opinion.

Sawyer's Spotlight The younger generation's take, straight from the barn

Every once in a while somebody sits down in the barn who makes you rethink what's actually possible in agriculture. Rick Anglin is a fourth-generation dairy farmer from Arizona who spent 17 years in conventional dairy before doing something almost nobody in the industry does: he walked away when things were actually going well. Not when he was broke. Not when the bank called. When the milk price was decent and the herd was worth something. He could see the ceiling on that model from where he was standing and decided to get out on his own terms.

What he built instead is Fond du Lac Farms, a fully integrated raw milk operation in the Arizona desert. He raises 100% Brown Swiss cows, runs his own processing facility, bottles the milk himself, and delivers it to Sprouts grocery stores across the state. His father-in-law drove a refrigerated van on delivery routes when they couldn't afford to cut in a distributor. Every middleman Rick eliminated was a margin point he kept. It took twelve years and there were stretches where he couldn't afford to rent a $350 trencher for a project. He welded fences by headlights at night and kept going.

What strikes me most about Rick's story isn't the success at the end. It's the preparation that came before it. Before he ever moved a cow, he spent months visiting other farms, building a network he called a think tank of people in the food business who would pressure-test the idea honestly. He kept a thick manila folder he called “The Dream,” full of sketches, clippings, and notes. His youngest daughter drew a little petting zoo on one of the pages. The business started in that folder, long before anything was built.

He also went to real estate school in a two-week crash course just to understand zoning and permitting laws. Not because he wanted to be an agent. Because he needed to know the rules of the environment he was building in before he committed. Six different properties fell out of escrow before he found the right one, a for-sale sign stuck in a bush on a back road nobody else was looking at. Most people would have quit after three. Rick Anglin filed it under the process and kept going.

If this one hit close to home, reply to this email. I mean it. I read every one.

4 Things That Caught Our Eye This Week

The theme running through this issue is that the people building something in rural America right now are the ones who stopped waiting for the system to hand them a fair deal. The screwworm made it into Texas because conditions changed and the response didn't keep up. The raw milk market got built because farmers stopped asking permission. Rick Anglin's business exists because he decided the ceiling on the old model wasn't a ceiling he wanted to spend his life against. Whatever you're sitting on, the folder is probably already full. The question is whether you're going to do something about what's in it.

We'll see you in the barn.

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