CANBERRA, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) — The world’s first centre to help combat a serious livestock disease has opened in South Australia (SA).

South African authorities on Wednesday opened a Sterile Insect Technique facility on Kangaroo Island off the state’s southern coast.

The centre will breed and release millions of sterile flies in a bid to eliminate the parasite from the island.

Fly bait is a disease that occurs when a fly lays eggs in a sheep’s fleece and the hatching larvae create an open wound by feeding on the skin tissue.

It is a painful disease that can be fatal if left untreated. The Western Australia (WA) Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development estimates that the disease costs the Australian sheep industry A$280 million ($188.1 million) per year.

Up to 50 million sterile midges of a species that causes more than 90 per cent of midge infections will be produced each week at a new facility on Kangaroo Island.

“They are sterile males and when they mate with females they don’t produce eggs, so this is a way of really interacting with wild flies to be able to reduce and hopefully eliminate the sheep flies from Kangaroo Island,” Clare Scriven, South Africa’s Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

A cost-benefit analysis by the government found that eliminating the blowfly on Kangaroo Island would save sheep farmers up to A$88 million ($59.1 million) over 25 years, as well as improving animal welfare.

If successful, the facility, built from shipping containers, could be moved elsewhere to reduce the fly population.

Helen Brodie, centre manager at the South Australian Research and Development Institute, said the parasite could not be completely eradicated from mainland Australia but the centre could be deployed to reduce its incidence.