Attorney Sarah Rich’s work representing immigrants for the Southern Poverty Law Center brings her inside some of the South’s largest poultry processing plants. She’s seen hundreds of workers standing shoulder-to-shoulder on both sides of conveyor belts as chickens whizzed past at speeds of more than 100 per minute.

Things can get dangerous, Rich said. Sometimes workers accidentally cut each other. They develop disabling injuries in their wrists and hands from the repetitive work of slashing and removing bones. And now they face a new danger from an unexpected place: spending too much time in each other’s spaces.

“The way the lines are set up, there’s no social distancing possible,” Rich said.

Poultry plants have become hot beds of coronavirus as it spreads in rural areas. A Wayne Farms processing plant in Albertville reported 75 positive cases and one death earlier this week, one of the largest outbreaks in the state. In Marshall County, home to Albertville, Emergency Management Agency Director Anita McBurnett said cases have also been reported at Pilgrim’s Pride and Tyson plants.

Marshall County now has more cases of COVID-19 than any of its neighbors, with more than a quarter coming from Wayne Farms. Across the country, cases linked to the meat processing industry have exploded. Beef and pork plants have been hit especially hard, with more than 700 cases coming from a single plant in South Dakota.

While much of the media attention has focused on Midwestern meatpacking plants, smaller clusters at poultry plants in the South have also raised concerns. More outbreaks could spell trouble for Alabama, where the industry accounts for tens of thousands of jobs and about $15 billion in revenue.

Chicken processing provides jobs not just for those working in the plants, but also to those up and down the supply chain, said James Hutcheson, chair of the Marshall County Board of Commissioners.

“You’re talking about the feed mills, truck drivers, chicken houses,” Hutcheson said. “It’s a lot of jobs.”

Frank Singleton, a spokesman for Wayne Farms, said the company has slowed production at the Albertville plant to provide more space between workers, but has no plans to shut down.

Debbie Berkowitz, worker safety expert at the National Employment Law Project, said that runs counter to guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Plants with large numbers of cases should shut down for at least 24 hours for deep cleaning, according to the CDC. The agency issued guidelines as the virus began spreading but didn’t make them mandatory.

“There is no [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] enforcement at all,” Berkowitz said. “They haven’t even done inspections in response to complaints.”

Singleton said the plant has taken several steps to contain the spread of COVID-19. Infrared scanners check temperatures of people entering the plant. Workers have been supplied with protective masks and smocks. Protective dividers have been installed in places where workers stand close together.

Anyone with an elevated temperature will be denied entry, according to the Wayne Farms website. Singleton said 250 employees were sent home to quarantine because they were exposed. He said the number of people who tested positive for the virus represented less than 10 percent of the plant’s 850 workers.

One Wayne Farms worker died from the virus. Singleton said he hadn’t worked since April 9.

Still, Berkowitz said the poultry industry and federal regulators could have moved faster to prevent more infections and deaths. On March 6, labor advocates asked federal regulators to mandate worker protections against infectious diseases. Instead, Berkowitz said, the feds relaxed their oversight.

Wayne Farms in Albertville was one of 16 plants that received special permission in April to increase the speed of production from a maximum of 140 chickens to 175. Union leaders and worker advocates say such speed ups hurt worker safety, especially during a pandemic, when employees need more time and space to improve hygiene and social distancing.

Despite receiving the special waivers, line speeds at plants have slowed. An employee at Wayne Farms said the plant appeared to be running at about half its normal capacity this week as workers called out for fear of getting sick.

The worker, who did not want to be identified for fear of losing her job, said many wanted to see the plant closed completely for cleaning. When the first employee became sick with COVID-19 a couple weeks ago, the plant called meetings to inform workers. But she said they didn’t provide protective masks or barriers between workers until this week.

“There were still twenty-plus people on each line,” she said. “Everybody still stayed shoulder-to-shoulder and back-to-back.”

Across the South, the death toll from chicken plants has been rising. Just over the border in Georgia, four employees at a Tyson plant in Camilla have died from the virus. Employees at a Wayne Farms plant in southeast Alabama have also tested positive.

Rich said she wasn’t surprised when COVID-19 appeared in poultry plants. Not only do employees work close together, they also share crowded spaces during meals and breaks. Companies were slow to rearrange break rooms and stagger mealtimes to protect workers, she said.

The work typically doesn’t pay much, and workers may carpool to save money and live in cramped quarters, which can increase the spread of disease into the community. Rich said the industry has a history of indifference to workplace safety to leads to high rates of injury and disability.

“It’s already a slow-motion disaster for workers in these plants and now it’s a more intense and deadly disaster,” Rich said.

Representatives of the industry dispute that. Caleb Hicks, spokesman for the Alabama Egg and Poultry Association said the industry has some of the strictest biosecurity measures in the nation. It was inevitable that some poultry workers would contract the virus, but plants have taken major steps to contain the spread, he said.

“In recent weeks, poultry companies have increased health and safety precautions at their facilities,” Hicks said. “These include erecting barriers between employees; increased health screenings; deep cleaning between shifts; facilitating social distancing by staggering breaks; emphasis on remaining socially distant while a work and not at work; restricting plant access to only essential personnel; increased employee education and training; encouraging employees who feel sick to stay home; and providing flexible paid sick leave. Absenteeism within these companies remains extremely low.”

According to the Wayne Farms’ website, employees who test positive for COVID-19 and those who have been exposed and quarantined received paid sick leave.

In other states, meat processing facilities have been forced to close by state or local authorities. It’s unlikely a company would decide to do that on their own, Berkowitz said.

“This was not inevitable,” Berkowitz said. “This did not have to happen, if plants had taken these steps earlier to prevent these outbreaks.”

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