Perdue Farms shares how they’re protecting workers

Recently, The Baltimore Sun published an article examining COVID-19 illnesses among poultry plant workers in Salisbury (“Salisbury made a national list of coronavirus hot spots. How many cases came from its poultry plant? Maryland won’t say,” May 15). Since Salisbury is home to Perdue Farms’ headquarters and one of our processing plants, the issues raised matter deeply to us. Our highest priority is protecting our associates from COVID-19, and that means giving paid time off to anyone who feels ill, enforcing social distancing, checking temperatures, providing masks, distributing safety information in multiple languages and many other measures. Strangely, the article omitted information we shared and focused narrowly on Perdue when other, larger poultry facilities operate nearby. Unfortunately, this resulted in an incomplete picture of our company’s and our community’s fight against COVID-19.

Coronavirus presents an enormous challenge and Perdue is devastated whenever our associates or their families are impacted. But we keep putting our best foot forward and we were encouraged when recent testing showed the illness rate at our Salisbury facility, at under 5%, was lower than the 7-8% community-wide rate. This indicates our efforts are having an effect and we won’t stop there. We’re constantly reevaluating, adding new preventive measures, and partnering with health authorities to help stop this pandemic — and we’ll continue as long as necessary.

Andrea Staub, Salisbury

The writer is senior vice president of corporate communications for Perdue Farms, Inc.