Illegal immigrants are not being checked properly for diseases, leading to many of their diseases being spread to our livestock. This is a huge threat to our food supply!

From The Epoch Times. Mass migration exposes the United States’ food supply to diseases and parasites that could ultimately affect national security, animal health experts told The Epoch Times.

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With unfettered illegal immigration—some 9 million encounters since 2021—the normal guardrails for inspection are ignored, raising the likelihood of unwanted diseases being brought across the border.

Dr. Michael Vickers has been a veterinarian for about 50 years and served on the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC),

The threat to the food supply is already apparent from the past cases of tuberculosis (TB) transmitted from illegal immigrants to dairy cows in Texas, he said. …

In recent years, thousands of Texas cattle have been slaughtered after being infected with drug-resistant TB through contact with illegal aliens who end up working in dairies, Dr. Vickers said.

He recalled two separate instances in which dairy herds were infected with human strains of TB in the Texas Panhandle. Certain strains of TB are zoonotic, meaning that they can be spread between humans and animals.

One Texas herd of about 10,000 was affected in Castro County in 2015, and another 13,000 cattle were affected in Sherman County in 2019, according to TAHC records. …

Dr. Vickers said he learned that 12 illegal immigrants who were working with those dairy herds were infected with TB.

Rules meant to keep people who are carrying disease out of the United States have been sidelined under the Biden administration, according to Ammon Blair, a border security advocate at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and former Border Patrol agent. …

For the first time in a quarter of a century, a New World screwworm resurgence is underway in Central America—a region that many migrants pass through on their way to the U.S. border. …

Susan Kibbe, executive director of the South Texans’ Property Rights Association, said she’s old enough to remember the screwworm outbreak when she was a teenager in Texas. She recalls having to scrape screwworm maggots out of the bellybuttons of newborn calves.

“It was devastating,” she said. …

She said a fever tick outbreak has already driven some ranchers out of business and that any new disease or parasite outbreak could push more ranchers to the financial brink—and endanger food security.

Texas counties bordering Mexico are already under a fever tick quarantine to stop them from spreading to livestock and deer in the state.

Fever ticks can carry a parasite that causes babesiosis, a malaria-like disease that can decimate a herd. …