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.” – READ MORE
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