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Outbreaks Among Food Supply Chain Workers Reflect Crowded Conditions

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Farm workers select, trim and fill baskets with yellow squash for cleaning and packing at Kirby Farms Farms in Mechanicsville, VA on Sep. 20, 2013. Lance Cheung/USDA

05.14.2020
| By Laura Wenus Laura Wenus, Editor |
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An estimated 3 million people work on farms in the United States every year to raise and harvest the nation’s produce. The meat and poultry industry is estimated to employ another half million. Working conditions in both industries tend to be harsh, and many workers have limited access to health care to begin with. With the coronavirus pandemic, these industries are seeing outbreaks. Civil Eats reporter Gosia Wozniacka has been covering working conditions in the nation’s food supply chain and how workers have been affected by the pandemic. Employer’s responses to outbreaks have varied widely, Wozniacka reports.

“I think there’s been a variety of responses, everything from employers who are very diligent and who have started training their workers, distributed masks, who have spaced out their workers in the field so that they’re not so close together when they’re working. There’s employers who have not even talked to their workers about COVID-19, employers who refuse to space workers farther apart. It’s really quite a wide variety.”

Gosia Wozniacka

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A segment from our radio show, “Civic.” Listen daily at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on 102.5 FM in San Francisco.

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About Laura Wenus

Laura Wenus

I’m an independent multimedia editor and reporter. In 2019, I helped build the Public Press’ low-power FM radio station, KSFP. I was also the inaugural host, from 2019 to 2022, of “Civic,” the Public Press’ radio show and podcast. I’ve covered local government and elections and reported on solutions to longstanding city problems in writing, video and audio for publications including Mission Local, KALW and the San Francisco Chronicle.

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