Coronavirus outbreaks continue to ravage food-processing plants across the United States with more than 1,000 cases confirmed in at least 60 facilities outside the meatpacking industry.
While much of the national focus has been on meatpacking plants, several of which have become high-profile hot spots for the virus, other food-processing facilities are also being hit.
With no federal agency compiling the number of cases in the nation’s food production facilities and no enforceable federal safety regulations in place to keep workers protected, it is likely the number of cases is much higher, Bloomberg reports.
Food shortages loom for the U.S. unless greater protections are introduced to battle the spread of coronavirus among the country’s 1.7million workers at food and beverage manufacturing facilities, experts warn.
Coronavirus cases in the country’s food-processing plants continue as calls mount for the federal government to introduce emergency safety guidelines to keep workers protected. Pictured, a worker enters the Seaboard Foods hog processing plant in Oklahoma
According to new data compiled by the Environmental Working Group, coronavirus outbreaks in food processing plants are not yet as pervasive as they are in meatpacking facilities but are still on the rise.
With no figures compiled nationally, the organization searched through media reports between March 14 and June 8 and found at least 1,193 COVID-19 cases in 60 food processing plants.
The cases included workers at industry giants such as Kraft Heinz and Birds Eye as well those as smaller brands such as Fairmont Foods.
Among the largest outbreaks listed was Steven Roberts Original Desserts in Aurora, Colorado, where they are at least 115 cases are reported among workers.
There were also 107 cases reported between two Ruiz Food facilities in California and 104 cases in a Birds Eye facility in Darien, Wisconsin.
According to separate survey carried out in May of union locals representing 79 plants by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 35 percent of food processing and dairy facilities have confirmed at least one coronavirus case.
The survey also found that 80 percent of employers weren’t testing for coronavirus and 25 percent of the workplaces did not allow for social distancing.
As cases in these facilities continue to rise, the Environmental Working Group has warned that tight working conditions make workers more susceptible to the spread of coronavirus and there will be drastic effects to the food supply chain if more and more workers are allowed to become sick.
‘Our food supply chains could quickly unravel, causing food prices to spike and increasing the number of Americans who struggle with hunger,’ the group states in its report.
Conditions within the facilities themselves don’t allow for social distancing with immigrant labor forces also living in cramped conditions, Bloomberg reports.
‘As a general rule, the further back you go in the supply chain, he more difficult it is to have proper social distancing and protective gear,’ Kevin Kenny, chief operating officer of Decernis, an expert in global food safety and supply chains, said.
‘Fruit, vegetable, nut and meat processing is a low-margin business.’
While the focus has been on larger outbreaks in meatpacking plants, workers in fruit-processing facilities are also concerned for their safety. Pictured Borton Fruit in Washington
A worker at Borton Fruit, pictured, told Bloomberg that people continue to come to work even if there are fears they are infected as they need the jobs to provide for their families
The impact of the tight conditions in the facilities on the spread of coronavirus can be seen in Yakima, Washington, according to Bloomberg.
The county is an agricultural hub with many workers still packed into crowded workplaces. It also has the highest per capita infection rate on the West Coast.
Workers in America’s food processing plants are disproportionately people of color who earn less than $40,000 a year, state the Environmental Working Group, and many are ineligible for sick leave if they did catch the coronavirus.
While The Families First Act, passed by Congress in March, requires some food industry employers to provide two weeks of paid sick leave, many are exempt from the requirement.
The lack of paid sick leave has left some workers deciding to continue to head into their workplaces even if they fear the have already been infected.
‘People are infected, and they come to work. They keep quiet about it,’ Paula Zambrabna, a fruit sorter in Borton & Sons in Yakima, Washington, told Bloomberg.
‘We live from our work. We are surviving from our wages. If we have children, how will we feed them?’
Even in fruit-processing plants such as this Allan Brothers facility pictured, it is hard for workers to maintain social distancing with the workplace
And the increase in cases is only set to worsen as more than half a million seasonal migrants spread across the nation as the summer harvesting season ramps up.
Unions and advocacy groups have slammed employers for not doing enough to protect worker by providing safety equipment including face masks and gloves.
They state that many facilities only began distribution when cases had already been reported.
According to the Teamsters Union, there has been a ‘marked decline’ in the number of cases in union-represented facilities as more robust safety procedures have been implemented but the same is not being done in those plants not represented by a union.
The Centers for Disease Control and Protection previously issued guidelines for how plants could deal with the spread of coronavirus but companies are under no obligation to implement them.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Department of Agriculture have not issued emergency standards that would enforce the CDC recommendations, increasing safety for workers.
Employers have argued that they have battled against shifting advice from authorities who initially told them masks were unnecessary at the start of the outbreak and should be kept for healthcare workers.
Yet the Environmental Working Group warned that if action isn’t taken now and more and more workers continue to get sick, it could dramatically increase the cost of food, affecting vulnerable American families.
The country has already experienced a record rise in the price of beef, Bloomberg reports, after some of the nation’s largest plants were forced to close due to large-scale outbreaks although this is being to now return to normal.
‘Food prices are mostly driven by the cost of labor, transportation and marketing, not by the wholesale price of ingredients. Even though the salaries earned by food processing workers can be near or below the poverty line, the cost of labor is often a major factor in the price of food,’ said the Environmental Working Group.
‘According to the USDA, food already accounts for 12 percent of household spending, but the poorest Americans spend about one-third of their income on food.’
The organization has called on the federal government to do more to protect food industry workers.
‘Food processing workers, who are disproportionately people of color, are taking enormous and largely avoidable risks to keep the rest of us fed, but the Trump Administration has failed to ensure they are safe,’ said Environmental Working Group senior vice president for government affairs, Scott Faber.
The warning comes as 22 states are seeing an increase in new COVID-19 cases as reopening continues.
Arizona has seen infections increase by more than 90 percent in a week, while Arkansas and Utah have gone up more than 60 percent. Massachusetts, Florida and New Mexico’s cases have increased by more than 40 percent compared to the week prior.
Michigan’s cases soared more than 150 percent last week due to the state including nearly 5,000 probable infections.
Among the states with increases was New Mexico where at least 287 of the state’s 2,269 new cases were tied to an outbreak at a meat processing plant in Cache County.
The increases comes after all 50 states at least partially lifted coronavirus lockdown measures last month.