POULTRY PLANTS hit with surge of cases.

Foster Farms spike noted in California

LOS ANGELES — Foster Farms, one of the West Coast’s largest producers of poultry, is facing scrutiny for new clusters of coronavirus infections at its facilities in California’s Central Valley, which follow a deadly, monthslong outbreak this year.

California- based Foster Farms reported that at least 193 people at its Cherry Avenue plant in Fresno tested positive for the coronavirus over a recent two-week period, along with 12 people at another Fresno plant. And a union official said at least 37 workers at the company’s Livingston complex in Merced County have tested positive since Nov. 30.

About 1,000 people work at the Cherry Avenue facility, meaning that about 20% of that plant’s workers tested positive, the company said. The plant was closed last weekend for deep cleaning and reopened this week.

The disclosures come after a long-lasting coronavirus outbreak at the Livingston facility over the summer left nine workers dead. Union officials allege the company isn’t meeting its obligation to share information about the current Livingston outbreak.

Foster Farms told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday that 21 Livingston workers had tested positive for the virus in a recent two-week period. About 1,900 tests had been administered at that plant during that period, and roughly 4,000 people work at that facility.

But under emergency rules newly enacted by California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, companies are required to keep track of all coronavirus cases among their employees and make a detailed log available to workers and their representatives. In major outbreaks — which the state agency defines as 20 or more cases within a 30-day period — employers are also required to evaluate ventilation and other conditions that could be driving transmission.

Elizabeth Strater of the United Farm Workers union, which represents employees at the Livingston plant, said union officials have repeatedly asked the company for details about the outbreak. She said the company provided a brief email citing 37 cases as of Thursday night but no detailed log.

“This is the sequel to a real-life horror story with no happy endings,” Strater said. “Workers at Foster Farms have reported no information being shared.”

Foster Farms spokesman Ira Brill said Tuesday that, given the surge in the region, at least some of his workers probably were infected in the community — or perhaps while carpooling to work — rather than in the factories.

He said the company is cooperating with Fresno County health officials to determine whether the virus is spreading within the plant and additional health and safety measures need to be taken.

Brill said the company has instituted a stringent policy of testing and screening employees for symptoms and has implemented “every mitigation that has been recommended” by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Such measures include installing Plexiglas dividers in the workplaces, staggering employee breaks, providing masks to workers and continuously cleaning worker areas.

“Our strategy is to test people” to identify asymptomatic cases and send those workers home “so they can protect the health of the people that are in the plant,” Brill said.

In a statement provided to The Times on Friday, Brill wrote that the company has completed more than 5,000 tests at the Livingston factory over the past two weeks and attributed the rise in positive cases to “significant increases in Merced County.”