Screwworm ban lifts at one Arizona gate: 700 head a day against a 1.2 million-head trade

Take the arithmetic of the pipe. Mexico's pre-closure trade averaged roughly 3,288 head a day spread over a full year ^[1]. At the ceiling the reopening schedule builds toward, and assuming the lane runs seven days a week, Douglas clears about 40 percent of that ^[3]. The opening fortnight, at the two lower steps, moves fewer than 12,000 animals in total ^[7]. In a US market where consumers are paying record beef prices and some have simply eaten less meat ^[11], that is a trickle with a start date attached.

Mexico's cattle export business was worth $1.2 billion last year ^[7]. Divided by the pre-ban head count, each animal carries about $1,000 ^[5]. Treat that as an order of magnitude rather than a price: the ban dates from May 2025 ^[6], so the dollar figure and the annual head count almost certainly do not describe the same twelve months.

The epidemiology sits awkwardly against the reopening. The outbreak, detected in November 2024, has reached 30 of Mexico's 32 states, and Sonora, the state feeding this crossing, logged its first case on Wednesday at Munihuasa, near the Chihuahua and Sinaloa borders ^[8]. Mexico counts 1,969 active cases, which authorities present as less than half the figure of a year ago and as evidence of containment, while conceding eradication will take time ^[9]. That implies something above 3,900 cases last August ^[6]. The fly is also already north of the line, with cases being fought in Texas and New Mexico ^[10]. What the protocol buys, then, is not a clean border but a governor on how many animals can be screened in a day.

Juan Carlos Ochoa, president of the Regional Livestock Union of Sonora, wants the opposite of a governor: he says the restrictions will limit shipments when both countries need more cattle moving, and told the Associated Press that authorities should think less politically and more technically ^[15][16]. Mexico's government accepted the US terms regardless, and some ranchers are unhappy about it ^[17]. On the US side, Juan Carlos Anaya of Grupo Consultor de Mercados Agricolas said domestic ranchers could not cover the missing supply, which contributed to closures at some meat-processing plants and hurt feedlot operations ^[12]. A queue at one port does not repair either balance sheet, and every rancher with animals ready is competing for the same handful of slots. Martin Alfonso Ibarra, who says the export halt cut his income 40 percent last year, has sixteen calves he hopes to send north ^[14][18].

For him the reopening is a real event. For a US packer buying against record prices, it is not yet supply.