How A July 4th Meal Exposes The Coronavirus Risk For Thousands Of US Food Workers

After months of stress, Americans have been looking forward to the pre–COVID-19 pleasures of a (socially distanced) 4th of July. How about a cookout? It's a traditional, low-key summer celebration — but amid the nation's growing outbreak, even a simple home-cooked meal comes at an exorbitant price.

A BuzzFeed News investigation reveals the extent to which the virus — and the nation’s inadequate response to it — has infected, sickened, and even killed workers up and down the nation's food supply chains as they work to keep our refrigerators full.

Take a typical summer feast: tangy ribs, a side of creamy pasta salad, and a slice of freshly baked apple pie. If you shop at a Walmart Supercenter, in, say, Massachusetts, the apples you’d buy would have been picked by workers in Washington state’s Yakima Valley, who live in a crowded labor camp with few protections in place. The fruit would then be sorted into boxes in an Allan Bros. packhouse, which for weeks failed to follow federal COVID-19 safety guidelines — even after employees started falling ill.

The ribs would have been sliced and packed by employees at a pork processing plant — like the Tyson Foods facility in Indiana that stayed open for weeks, even as the virus spread through its staff.

The pasta would have been stacked by grocery clerks whose employer was slow to close down for a deep cleaning after workers got sick, and to inform the local health department and customers of the growing outbreak.

From those three workplaces alone — the Allan Bros. packhouse in Yakima Valley, the Tyson plant in Indiana, and the Walmart in Massachusetts — around 1,100 workers have tested positive for COVID-19, and at least four have died, according to a BuzzFeed News review.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertsamaha/july-4th-barbecue-food-coronavirus?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4