Posted on 06/11/2020 4:27:28 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES/CHICAGO - From apple packing houses in Washington state to farm workers in Florida and a California county known as “the world’s salad bowl,” outbreaks of the novel coronavirus are emerging at U.S. fruit and vegetable farms and packing plants.
A rising number of sick farm and packing house workers comes after thousands of meat plant employees contracted the virus and could lead to more labor shortages and a fresh wave of disruption to U.S. food production.
The Trump administration said last month it may extend an executive order to keep meat plants operating to fruit and vegetable producers as well, a sign it is concerned fresh produce could be the next sector hit.
While social distancing can be more easily implemented for workers harvesting fruits and vegetables in fields and working outside may reduce some risks for virus spread, plants that package foods such as apples and carrots resemble the elbow-to-elbow conditions that contributed to outbreaks at U.S. meat packing plants.
By late May, there were more than 600 cases of COVID-19 among agricultural workers in Yakima County, Washington. Of those, 62% were workers in the apple industry and other packing operations or warehouses, according to a Reuters review of data from county health officials.
With 4,834 known cases as of June 10, the county had the highest per-capita infection rate on the West Coast.
“The (production) line moves super fast. And you’re working side by side and back to back,” said Edgar Franks, political director with local farmworker union Familias Unidas por la Justicia in Washington state.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Got to keep the hysteria going 5 more months, right Reuters?
Hope you got your gardens planted already this year.
But, what about round two?! Isn’t that even scarier?!
If it wasn’t so serious it would be funny. But it’s not.
The worst thing so far to come out of the virus is the riots, but the really bad part is yet to come - the economic fallout. People that are old enough to remember will pine for the salad days of the great depression.
Given their living conditions, how they often get to work, I doubt Xi’s Revenge is being spread at the plant or in the fields.
BTW, enemedia, if fieldwork isn’t safe, how is protesting...?
Not Americans- who cares.
The China Virus cannot live on produce for any length of time. That aside this is a retread of a story from 2 months ago.
“...but the really bad part is yet to come - the economic fallout. People that are old enough to remember will pine for the salad days of the great depression.”
It will be not close to what you intimate. There is no comparison between the great depression caused by fundamentally bad economic policy and this contraction which was caused by deliberate moves made mistakenly (or not) but which can and are being reversed as of now.
Victory Gardens, homemade hooch, and roll your own tobacco. The most important food groups. Keep loading ammo and vote.
Just had some beets pickled and my cabbage is doing well. Lettuce,snow peas,cucumbers,tomatoes,peppers. All 25 fruit trees will ripen in a couple of weeks at this altitude. Still,I don’t think there will be a shortage. Just an excuse to raise prices.
This will be the rats new theme to club Trump with. ... After all, this BLM crap will fail too.
Horse crap. This is all part of a coordinated effort this morning to drive the markets down and to scare people again.
How many of the infected are sick enough to go to the hospital? Of those how many need to go to ICU? and how many die? All we hear are cases, no mention of severity
Raising prices on 42 million unemployed families seems like a really bad idea.
You got that right.
Printing trillions of dollars and handing them out like free breath mints is, to me, a form of “bad economic policy”.
“Got to keep the hysteria going 5 more months, right Reuters?”
They need it badly. Some people are really enjoying it now. Very cult like.
I use Soap to wash my fruit & vegetables, works fine.
A labor shortage with 13.3% unemployment. RIIIIIIIIGGHHHHHHHT.
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