(Reuters) – Meat processing plants around the world are demonstrating critical points of coronavirus infection, with an outbreak at a plant in Germany that led Guetersloh to the country’s first domain on Tuesday to be sentenced to be blocked.
More than 1,500 workers at the Guetersloh plant tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19, while outbreaks have also hit meat and poultry plants in Britain in recent days.
In many rural areas of the United States, meat-packing plants have been the main source of infection. On April 28, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep those factories open, with caution of a possible risk to U.S. food supplies.
The meat industry is vulnerable to coronavirus infections due to the nature of the work: intense physical work, carried out indoors near other workers.
“Their painting environments (processing chains and other spaces in busy factories where they are in close contact with co-painters and supervisors) can make a significant contribution to their potential exposures,” says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Painters
CDC maintains a list of factory recommendations, adding measures to separate staff, such as arrival times and staggered breaks, masked supply staff and hand sanitizer, and equipment is disinfected.
He says factories take the temperature of the staff when they arrive and send those who have a fever home.
The conditions in the workshop itself are also not the only challenge. The meat packing staff percentage of transportation and housing once your shift ends.
In Germany, for example, many are migrants from poorer EU countries, such as Bulgaria and Romania, housed in giant dormitories where the virus can spread.
“Some of those factories have accommodation on or near the site, where there are several people in the bedroom, they can be transported on a bus to the paint site and will be in combination all day,” said Michael Head, a global gym. expert at the University of England in Southampton.
In the United States, at the end of May, the TUAC union estimated that at least 44 meatpackers had died from COVID-19 and that at least 30 meat-packing plants had to be temporarily closed, affecting more than 45,000 and contributing to 40% relief in the ability to slaughter red meat.
Reporting through Peter Graff; Additional reports through Kate Kelland; Editing through Pravin Char
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