In Yakima County, Wash., some fruit orchard owners declined on-site testing of workers by health departments at the height of harvest season even as coronavirus infections spiked. In Monterey, Calif., workers at some farms claimed foremen asked them to hide positive diagnoses from other crew members. And in Collier County, Fla., health officials did not begin widespread testing of farmworkers until the end of harvest, at which point the workers had already migrated northward.
At the height of harvest season, growers supplying some of America’s biggest agricultural companies and grocery store chains flouted public health guidelines to limit testing and obscure coronavirus outbreaks, according to thousands of pages of state and local records reviewed by The Washington Post. […]
[…] Eleven states (California, Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin) have introduced mandatory protections for farmworkers during the pandemic that include providing PPE and requiring physical distancing, workplace disinfection and worker testing. Many issued recommendations only after seeing significant outbreaks among farmworkers in their states. Twenty states have issued nonenforceable guidance, and 19 states, including Florida and Texas, have issued no recommendations. […]
[…] “Nearly every suggestion we gave about how to meet the needs of the farmworker community — from early community-wide testing, to effective health education, the need for contact tracing and isolation areas apart from overcrowded housing — was met with initial rejection and delay,” Reyes Chavez said. […]
