Let us pause, dear reader, to contemplate the sublime metaphor of a parasitic maggot devouring the living tissue of a bovine. For this is precisely what Canada has done: it has looked upon the Texas longhorn and seen, not a source of protein, but a harbinger of putrefaction. The ban on Texas cattle over the New World screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax, if you care for Linnaean precision) is a tale not of veterinary prudence but of a civilisation that has lost its nerve.
Consider the historical parallel. In the late Roman Empire, the administration grew obsessed with purity laws: the regulation of sacrifices, the classification of meats, the endless bureaucratic nitpicking over what could enter the city gates. Sound familiar? Canada, that vast northern simulacrum of a nation, now patrols its borders against a fly whose larvae might, if the stars align, inconvenience a cow. Meanwhile, its own body politic is riddled with ideological screwworms: the cult of gender mutability, the worship of racial grievance, the endless performative sorrow over historical sins. But these maggots are invisible to the sanitary inspectors.
And what of Britain? Our own Food Standards Agency is reportedly on alert. One imagines a Whitehall mandarin peering at a map of North America, muttering about 'biosecurity corridors.' But have we forgotten that this island has survived the Black Death, the Great Stink, and the BSE crisis? We are a nation that once ate beef from cows that had been fed the ground-up remains of their own diseased kin. We did not ban Argentinian beef when the military junta was feeding dissidents to the pigs. No, we are only alarmed when a fly from the American South might, heaven forfend, make landfall.
This is intellectual decadence, pure and simple. The Victorians, who knew a thing or two about empire, would have laughed at such timidity. They faced down cholera, typhus, and the occasional anarchist bomb with a stiff upper lip and a gin and tonic. Today, we cancel entire species from the food chain because of a risk that can be managed with a simple dip and quarantine. Do we not trust our own veterinary science? Or do we simply prefer the fantasy of a sterile, maggot-free world, untainted by the messy realities of biology and trade?
The real screwworm is in our minds. It feeds on the decaying tissue of our confidence, our sense of national purpose, our willingness to accept risk as the price of life. Canada, a country that exports maple syrup and apologies, now exports bovine interdiction. And Britain, ever the anxious follower, stands ready to mimic the gesture. One day, perhaps, we will ban all meat because it comes from animals that can die. Then we will be truly pure, and truly dead.
Let the Texas cattle roam. Let them bring their flies and their hardy, American ignorance. A nation that cannot face a maggot is a nation that deserves its decline.
