The New World screwworm, which was found in the United States in June for the first time in decades, often chooses livestock like cows to host its flesh-eating larvae. That fact may have some meat-eaters on edge, but public health leaders have emphasized repeatedly that the parasite is not a threat to the nation’s food safety.

The fly does pose a threat to animals that are a part of the country’s food supply: The Dallas Federal Reserve puts the potential economic damage in the billions for the southwestern US alone. Screwworm also threatens to raise the price of beef at a time when Americans are already paying record high prices for burgers and steak.

But unlike bacteria like salmonella or a virus like hepatitis A, which can sneak past the country’s food safety inspection system and make millions sick, it’s nearly impossible for screwworm to end up on your dinner table. “It’s a threat to food, inasmuch as it’s a threat to food prices, but it’s not a threat from the perspective of food quality or the food that you’ll be consuming,” said Maximillian Seunik, executive director of Screwworm Free Future, a nonprofit advocacy initiative dedicated to the eradication of the parasite. New World screwworm is unique in the fly world.

Many kinds of fly larvae eat dead or decaying tissue and may sometimes end up on meat, but New World screwworm larvae need living tissue to survive and develop. Screwworm flies don’t lay eggs in meat, fruit or vegetables. “Meat is still safe,” said livestock entomology and parasitology expert Dr.

Jonathan Cammack, an assistant professor and the state extension specialist at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. “It’s not even a true disease, like what we think of with a bacteria or a virus that spread from animal to animal. So if a single animal in a herd or pack or group is infested, that doesn’t mean that every other animal in that group is going to be infested.” A screwworm fly infests warm-blooded animals – including, very rarely, humans – by targeting a mucous membrane, like in the nose, or an open wound that can be small as a tick bite.

It lays hundreds of eggs, and when the larvae hatch, generally 12 to 24 hours later, they immediately begin to screw themselves into the host animal’s flesh and eat the living tissue around them, deepening the wound. New World screwworm larvae are incapable of surviving on nonliving material.

In fact, if the host dies before the larvae drop off to pupate in the ground, the larvae will typically die along with it. While an animal that has recovered from a New World screwworm infestation could enter the food supply, it would be highly unlikely for an infested animal to end up at a slaughterhouse.

Larvae would be visible, and the animal would look sick, Cammack said. If a sick animal did end up at a slaughterhouse, the US Department of Agriculture’s thorough meat inspection system would very likely spot it, separate it from others and deem it US Suspect.

This label indicates a need for additional examination by a public health veterinarian. If the vet designates an animal unfit for human consumption, it will not end up in the food supply.

And even after an animal is slaughtered, the meat goes through a thorough inspection looking for any sign of disease, abnormalities or contamination. Animals that have healed from a screwworm infection may eventually end up in the food supply, but they would no longer carry the larvae.

When an animal is infested, vets remove the larvae and disinfect the wound with a medicine that can treat and prevent further infestation. US Food and Drug Administration regulations require that any animal that has been treated with any medicine be kept out of the food supply for a certain length of time, depending on the medicine given, to make sure no harmful residue ends up in meat.

All these safeguards prevent screwworm from ending up in your meat, although you should still follow standard guidelines for safe cooking. And while screwworm can also end up in wildlife that is targeted by hunters, scientists say a screwworm wound would be visible, the cream-colored maggots noticable, and the smell so pungent that a hunter would know not to eat something like this, and even if it got that far, a professional game processor would not package something like this.

If hunters come across an infested animal, the USDA encourages them to avoid handling it. Instead, call the local Wildlife Services office immediately, record the location and take photos of the wounds.

Texas and New Mexico have been conducting awareness campaigns and handing out educational materials to raise awareness about the pest so hunters know to be on the lookout for these infestations.