Screwworm, Bird Flu and Foot-and-Mouth Disease: Is U.S. Dairy Ready?

Disease pressure is back in the dairy market conversation.

New World screwworm has moved into the U.S.

Avian flu is still lingering in dairy herds.

Foot-and-mouth disease is also back in the conversation after a recent Dutton Ranch storyline raised questions about what an outbreak would mean for U.S. cattle and dairy.

So, we got together the experts and asked: is U.S. dairy ready?

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In this episode:

In The Milk Check episode 101, host Ted Jacoby III is joined by Jamie Jonker, chief science officer and vice president of sustainability and scientific affairs for the National Milk Producers Federation, and Sarina Sharp, market analyst for the Daily Dairy Report and Risk Manager at Ag Business Solutions. We break down what these disease risks mean for dairy cattle, milk production, farm-level disruption and market economics.

We cover:

How screwworm could disrupt individual dairy farms

Why the closed border with Mexico is changing feeder cattle flows, beef prices and dairy farm economics

Where avian flu stands today, and why current cases are not affecting dairy like they did in 2024

Why foot-and-mouth disease remains a low-risk, high-consequence threat for U.S. livestock

Get up to speed on what animal health risks mean for milk production, dairy markets and farm-level decision-making

Listen to The Milk Check episode 101: Screwworm, Bird Flu and Foot-and-Mouth Disease: Is U.S. Dairy Ready?

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Ask The Milk Check

TMC-Intro-final

Ted Jacoby III: Coming up on the Milk Check.

Sarina Sharp: The border is shut, and it doesn’t look like it will open anytime soon, so we just have this vacuum of Mexican beef cattle.

Ted Jacoby III: Welcome to the Milk Check from T.C. Jacoby & Co., your complete guide to dairy markets, from the milking parlor to the supermarket shelf. I’m Ted Jacoby. Let’s dive in.

Ted Jacoby III: Today we are excited to have two special guests. First, we have Jamie Jonker, chief science officer and vice president of sustainability and scientific affairs for the National Milk Producers Association,

And second, we have Serena Sharp, the excellent market analyst who does our weekly market report. Serena, Jamie, thanks for joining us today. We’re excited to have you.

Jamie Jonker: Thank you for having me here. I think we’re gonna have a number of things that are quite timely to talk about today.

Sarina Sharp: Thanks for having me again.

Ted Jacoby III: In addition to those two, we have some of our usual suspects. We have Mike Brown, our VP of dairy market intelligence. We have Jacob Menge, our VP of trading strategy and risk management. We have my brother Gus, president of the dairy fluid group.

We have Josh White, our VP of dairy ingredients. And we have Tristan Suellentrop on our sales and marketing team, and Manuel Polzer, who is part of Jake’s risk management team. Guys, thanks for joining us today. So the topic we’re gonna be discussing today, there are three different diseases that have been gaining news in terms of how it might be affecting milk production and dairy cows.

The first would be screwworm which has come across the border from Mexico, the second is avian flu is back. And of course, the third is Dutton Ranch recently had an episode that talked about foot-and-mouth disease on their cattle farm in Texas.

And so of course, we’re getting questions about that. But we’ll start with the one that’s probably getting the most attention, and that is screwworm coming across the border from Mexico. It is now in Texas, and it is in New Mexico. Jamie, why don’t you just give us a brief background on what is screwworm, and how does it affect dairy cattle versus beef cattle?

Jamie Jonker: Yeah. Great question, Ted. New World screwworm is a fly that, lays its eggs in mammals. It was eradicated from the U.S. in the