But then some employees lost their sense of taste and smell and had trouble breathing. In mid-June, it became clear that Todd Greiner Farms in Hart was facing a primary COVID-19 outbreak among his workforce.
At least 94 other people connected to the farm tested positive, the largest outbreak on the Oceana County farm, according to emails from the County Department of Health received through the allocation of COVID-19 documentation from Columbia University’s Brown Institute for Media Innovation and provided to Free Press. .
Department of Health spreadsheets followed the diagnosis of 55 instances of Todd Greiner Farms for less than two weeks in June, in which almost all workers were known as Hispanics or Latinos. According to the emails, the virus spread to the families of farmworkers, with 15% of the infections being domestic or secondary instances in mid-June.
“It’s crazy, but I think in everyone’s history, there’s a connection with a migrant worker,” Doreen Byrne wrote on June 28. Byrne is the Department of Health’s Communicable Disease Coordinator for District 10, covering 10 counties in northwestern Michigan. .
Among those at Todd Greiner Farms who fell ill, a supervisor passed away, two staff members said. The man’s death certificate lists his cause of death as “Complications of COVID Pneumonia 19”.
It is known how many of the state’s approximately 45,000 migrant and seasonal agricultural workers, many of whom are Latino, have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic erupted in March. at least 46 outbreaks in agriculture, food processing and migrant camps as of September 17.
The MDHHS commissioned COVID-19 through agricultural employers and migrant labour camp operators in August, a resolution that some farmers have rejected with a legal battle.
Emails received under data freedom law requests show that officials at fitness branches in several counties were involved in outbreaks and on farms long before the state’s mandate.
During a shift at Todd Greiner Farms in mid-June, a 25-year-old woman, who was one of several staff members who asked not to be known in this article for fear of wasting her jobs or not locating long-term paintings, said she began coughing so hard that she couldn’t catch her breath. He described a chaotic day of ambulances that caused a painter who became alarmingly pale in the break room and another who had trouble breathing. Positive.
“That day, 30 people, I, left, ” he said.
Todd Greiner Farms responded by requesting comments. A woman who responded over the phone refused to comment, saying that “no one here would be interested” in talking about coronavirus cases.
Michigan farmers and their representatives protect their practices, saying that the fitness and protection of their staff is one of their most sensitive concerns. They say this year has been a struggle for them, with a lot of uncertainty about their future.
“Our farms and agricultural businesses have undergone excessive measures to the fitness and protection of their workers,” said Ernie Birchmeier, director of the Michigan Farm Bureau. “It is excessively vital that we do this because we rely on a workforce to harvest crops, pack them, have them delivered to them. Our farms have taken this scenario very seriously and continue to do so. “
Agricultural staff play an important role in Michigan’s agricultural industry, which contributes $104. 7 billion a year to the state economy, according to the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. Michigan, with more than three hundred other commodities, is the peak in the agriculturally varied state. after California.
Some employees arrive as early as February to begin the planting season and remain until mid-November, moving from one farm to another. The fruit and vegetable season begins with asparagus in the spring and ends with apples in the fall.
Coronavirus outbreaks have an effect on advocates of agricultural painters and fitness experts, as they say that migrant personnel are at risk of exploitation and would possibly be vulnerable to COVID-19, in part because they paint and live in overcrowded environments.
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Historically, migrant staff have experienced a lack of protection in the tasks, said Alexis Handal and Lisbeth Iglesias-Rios, researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health who interviewed agricultural staff in 2019 for an exam called the Michigan Agricultural Workers Project. communicate about their fitness and protection because they are afraid to waste their tasks.
“There is a life force dynamic at stake here, and staff are not required to control their living and operating conditions,” said Handal, associate professor of epidemiology.
And “the concern of deportation is enormous” for undocumented immigrants, said Iglesias-Ríos, a postdoctoral researcher. This would possibly mean keeping quiet about problems such as lack of mask and other non-public protective equipment.
“Having a silent workforce is detrimental to the pandemic,” Iglesias-Ríos said.
Adrian Vazquez-Alatorre, executive director of El Concilio, an immigrant advocacy organization in Kalamazoo, said Latin American migrant staff struggled to get coverage over the pandemic, especially before this year.
“They didn’t get masks before,” Vazquez-Alatorre said of some greenhouses, farms and food processing centers. He said employers had ignored the demands of mask workers and other protections.
Some staff members who contracted COVID-19 in the task told Free Press that their employers did not respect their physical condition and protection and did not pay them for their leave after giving positive. However, other farm staff reported that their employers had examined them before. were ordered and made up for in the absence of physical fitness.
Todd Greiner Farms employee who became ill with COVID-19 said she and her colleagues were two feet away on the production line and colliding with others, grabbing asparagus boots on a belt.
“I feel like there were too many people, ” said the woman, who lives in Hart. “I say to myself: “I don’t see why you don’t do a shiftArray at the moment . . . and you have more space between us. “
Another worker, a 25-year-old Texas woman, said Todd Greiner Farms had a protocol for hand washing, dressing in gloves and social estating in the break rooms.
“But running on the line, on the production line, we were all very close to each other. They didn’t stick to the 6-foot distance,” she said.
Both women stated that Todd Greiner Farms provided reusable cloth masks that were collected at the end of the shift to be washed and distributed to other workers.
“How can you keep the virus away from other people when you do this?How sure are you that the virus will be removed or that germs will be removed from those face masks?” said Hart’s resident.
He said that staff were allowed to wear their own masks, but believes the farm has provided disposable masks.
She said frustrated he came out.
His account of workers’ departure is backed by emails sent through District 10 Department of Health staff. Byrne, the communicable disease coordinator, wrote in an email on June 28 to the official that “the farm is closed for the season. week. “
Agricultural epidemics increased in a few days in early June, said Robin Walicki, clinical manager of the District 10 Department of Health. In the department’s 10-county policy domain, Oceana County experienced the biggest leap, with more cases on farms and food processors in Newaygo and Mason counties.
“It accelerated so temporarily in a few days that I think it might have taken us a bit by surprise,” Walicki told the Free Press. “There was a crash after everyone stayed home. We spent a few days without any cases. I think a sense of security reassured us a bit . . . Temporarily it has become very difficult to stick to all Contacts. “
The Department of Health has called more translators and reassigned 20 others from other divisions to help you find the contact. The nurses worked for about six weeks, Walicki said.
Walicki had accurate figures on Monday, but said cases only increased sporadically since MDHHS instructed agricultural staff to verify in August that apple orchards were ready for the season.
“I think because we may have other new people in the domain with another harvest season, we’re starting to see some other people get tested,” he said. “They had all been examined, isolated and quarantined. “
Last August, after an outbreak in June of four workers, Tree Farms in the village of Walkerville, County Oceana, had its first situation “and if they had already tested positive” with a migrant worker, according to emails exchanged between the worker had tested positive less than two months earlier and had been denied control at several fitness clinics because he had tested positive shortly before.
The emails show some suspicion about the speed with which farm staff returned to the paintings and the possibility of retesting.
“I understand that if you’ve tested positive on COVID 19, no one in the domain will ever check it again,” wrote Jennifer Juliano, human resources manager at Tree Farms, asking if she could employ staff that may not be reviewed. Confusion around the protocol meant they were directed from the county’s fitness branch to the state.
Michael Fusilier of Manchester, who runs a small circle of relatives, a vegetable farm and a greenhouse in Washtenaw County, said they protect their workers.
“We make sure everyone wears masks,” Fusilier told Free Press. “I have one of my who worked for me, she’s guilty of making sure our teams are doing the right things and respecting executive order regulations. “. And so we tried very hard. “
In addition to uncertainty, Fusilier Family Farms had to close due to a state decree preventing greenhouses from promoting products. The Michigan Nursery and Landscaping Association filed a lawsuit challenging the order.
“It was a very stressful moment, not knowing what was going on,” Fusilier said. “We lost sales from the beginning because we couldn’t open as soon as usual. “
The state required that key checks be carried out before August 24 and agricultural employers with more than 20 employees on site are implemented at the same time and migrant housing providers. In the future, they should check new staff as well as those who have been exposed to COVID-19 or who have symptoms.
Employers and housing operators pay the check bill, but they can cover some or all of the costs.
Several immigrant advocates have supported the state order, while some farms and farms have alleged that it unfairly targets farms and Latinos. Opponents filed a federal lawsuit challenging the order.
“We are very disappointed with the public aptitude order that was introduced, in particular by targeting migrant and seasonal staff in the farming community,” said Birchmeier of the Michigan Farm Bureau, which supported the lawsuit. “The staff was very concerned about that. “
The Farm Bureau’s order had led some Michigan farmers to leave fields and orchards.
But the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state, and the two farms and the four that filed a lawsuit withdrew their complaint this month.
Before the state commissioned the tests, Governor Gretchen Whitmer ordered COVID-19 protections in June in the state’s 782 registered migrant worker housing camps.
The State Department of Agriculture and Rural Development said it inspected all authorized migrant housing camps, most of which are located in western Michigan, to verify compliance with the order.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture said on 9/11 that all camps complied with the order and that no civil or criminal sanctions had been filed against a housing provider.
But Teresa Hendricks, executive director of migrant legal assistance at Grand Rapids, said she and she had documented a number of problems raising awareness of housing sites. The nonprofit law firm visited camps in western Michigan 3 days a week and distributed 4,600 reusable masks this summer.
Last year, legal assistance for migrants referred 67 court cases on housing situations and other disorders to the Ministry of Agriculture, and this year they have made 102 references, Hendricks said.
He stated that the maximum number of court cases was not unusual similar to housing camps that did not publish their COVID-19 preparation plans, lack of disinfectants and lack of transparent isolation spaces for others who tested positive.
Most agricultural staff homes are designed for staff to share percentage rooms, which, according to Hendricks, ranges from rooms for four people in trailers to barracks-style sets of 50 beds or more in a room. beds where imaginable and inspire citizens to sleep from head to toe.
“I see staff looking to create their own barriers among the rest of the staff, hanging sheets around their beds so as not to mix airspace,” Hendricks said. “We see other people looking to reuse surgical masks, wash them and hang them from a rope. “
On a hot August afternoon, Hendricks and forensic pathologist Molly Spaak packed a van with over a hundred bags of cloth masks, hand sanitist, plastic gloves and data on how staff could touch them to complain. to Kent County’s “Fruit Ridge,” where apple harvesting is just beginning.
At a camp south of Sparta, they met those who had recently arrived from Mexico on transitory agricultural visas, known as H-2A, who planned to stay until the end of October. A dozen men in a caravan-like construction conversed in Spanish with Hfinishricks and Spaak. They said they were going to have COVID-19 tests the next day.
Some other housing site located between rows of Honeycrisp and Gala apple trees, Spaak walked through the tidy camp to see if anyone was home.
He approached the white booths for several other people shouting: “Hello. Hello, anyone?
Brenda Martinez, 32, was discovered in the house with her two young children while her husband and the rest of the farm staff were away. Her husband has been a temporary Chase Orchards worker for four years. She likes it there, she says. Most other staff benefit from the H-2A program.
Her husband became ill in July and tested positive for COVID-19, Martinez said. Chase Orchards reviewed his circle of relatives while he was sick and on leave, and neither Martinez nor his children spread the virus.
Martinez’s mother worked on a blueberry farm in Ottawa County this summer and the workers who tested positive there left because they didn’t need to isolate themselves, she said.
“They wanted to work, so they just left,” he says.
Hendricks said agricultural painters’ checks have good intentions, but the fact that other people can’t paint while they have the virus is a check for those who paid in low health. source of income for one month when he had COVID-19. Because she is undocumented, she did not think she could simply ask for payment for lost time, Hendricks said.
A 43-year-old farm employee from Newaygo County, who asked not to be identified, said he was involved with the virus because he had four children, but he is also afraid of wasting his homework if he tested positive. not to perceive why staff testing is not required in many other industries.
“This has been implemented for everyone, not just agricultural workers,” the man said through a translator. “We don’t know why he’s so pointed at us. “
Another farm said she was happy to get tested. Raquel Ramirez Hernandez, 59, works year-round at Peterson Farms in the village of Oceana County in Shelby, where she packs peaches, apples, cherries and blueberries.
He said the company tested his data last spring when transit personnel arrived.
“There was a very large influx of people, and we were all pleased to have been evaluated,” Ramirez Hernandez of Hart said through a translator.
First it came back negative. Thirty-seven other people related to Peterson Farms tested positive in mid-June, according to emails from the Department of Health. Ramirez Hernandez contracted the virus in early July and paid for two weeks.
America Reyes, 52, a Texas resident who lives in Hart during the developing season, believes she and other members of the circle of relatives who contracted COVID-19 gave it to her from two brothers working at Peterson Farms. Reyes said his brothers had a contract with Peterson and were not paid for the hours lost to their illness.
A spokesman for Peterson Farms rejected an interview request.
Another staff reported having issues.
Juana, 39, who has asked her last call to be used, has been working on Michigan farms for 15 years and is lately packing eggs.
He said he tested positive for coronavirus in April and had to be away from paintings for a month and a half, making it difficult to pay his bills.
“COVID-19 has affected me in many ways, mentally, financially and economically,” Juana said through a translator at a press convention organized last month through immigrant advocates. “I got angry with the COVID-19 because in the paintings they didn’t provide us with safety protections, they didn’t give us the mask. We had to buy the mask with our own money. And many of us in the paintings gave us poor health due to lack of protection. equipment in our pictures. “
The Texas woman she painted at Todd Greiner Farms said that before she and others on the production lines became COVID-19 in June, they and others on the production lines were stressed for temporarily painting as the season approached.
She said other people were so tired they forgot to take care of themselves.
“They forgot to realize how tired this virus is costing them. They think they were just tired from work. I believe it because we were already infected,” he said.
Contact Angie Jackson: ajackson@freepress. com; 313-222-1850. Follow her on Twitter: AngieJackson23
Contact Niraj Warikoo: nwarikoo@freepress. com or 313-223-4792. Twitter @nwarikoo