Musk cuts to cattle screwworm outbreaks could cost $1.8bn

In 2025, Elon Musk was causing havoc in the US via his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). As critics said at the time, Musk wasn’t making cuts in a sensible and practical fashion; he was just pointing at programmes on a spreadsheet and saying ‘cut that‘. Now, the impacts of his time in government are becoming more and more apparent:

> save $15M a year by cutting a screwworm monitoring program

> screwworm outbreak almost immediately

> $1B to combat it

Government efficiency https://t.co/EHeY9if26V

— Luke Miani (@LukeMiani) June 15, 2026

Musk is a failing worm

Musk was supposedly in position to reduce the national debt. As reported, his failure in this regard was complete:

WOW! You can really see where DOGE began its work! https://t.co/5QGSDDn3XB

— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) December 23, 2025

Here’s what one of the young men Musk employed to carry out DOGE cuts said:

I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was. This isn’t to say that it can’t be made more efficient — elimination of paper, elimination of faxing — but these aren’t necessarily fraud, waste and abuse.

If you have any degree of familiarity with how Musk conducts himself, you’ll be unsurprised to learn the self-proclaimed ‘free speech absolutist‘ fired this guy for his comments.

Getting to the screwworm issue, Forbes reported that Musk cut funding for a monitoring programme. Making things worse, the cut came:

days before the U.S. ended a temporary suspension of cattle imports from Mexico, meaning livestock was allowed to cross the border without any of the monitoring previously funded by the U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID)

Screwworm is once again present in American livestock. In the long-term, this could decimate the American herd; in the short-term, it’s going to make it hard to impossible for the US to export beef.

The cost of Musk

Reporting on the successful 1960s programme to eradicate screwworm, Forbes wrote:

The eradication was the result of multiple sterile fly programs across the south that cost roughly $42 million in the mid 1960s, the equivalent of about $452 million today.

There have been outbreaks since, but there hasn’t been a significant problem in decades. USDA estimates show that if the US suffers an outbreak similar to what it saw in 1976, it could cost as much as $1.8bn.

To try and prevent a future outbreak:

The USDA is spending $750 million on a new Texas facility capable of producing roughly 300 million sterile screwworms per week, but it won’t be operational until at least 2027

In other words, it’s going to cost the US close to a billion even if there isn’t a significant outbreak.

The DOGE legacy

Speaking on Musk’s time in office, the House Committee on the Budget reported:

DOGE’s Mass Firings Result in Gutted Services and Higher Costs.

The committee added:

President Trump and Elon Musk are slashing essential services that millions of Americans depend on through mass firings of government employees. Through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), they have illegally fired tens of thousands of employees through prohibited personnel actions.

These cuts threaten services that Americans rely upon, such as the delivery of Social Security benefits, access to classrooms for students with disabilities, and help processing tax refunds. Additionally, these cuts to the federal workforce will likely make the deficit worse, not better, thanks to decreased oversight and increased tax dodging.

From a UK perspective, it’s worth being aware of the failure of DOGE, because Reform UK is looking to repeat it. And as you might have already guessed, this means cuts to public services combined with infinite money for flags: