Foster Farms has reopened a poultry processing plant in Livingston, Calif., after shutting it for a week to conduct thousands of COVID-19 tests on employees and conduct “deep cleaning” of the facilities.
The company said it decided to shut down the Livingston poultry plant — the largest operation in a complex there — after 392 positive cases were detected and eight people died of the virus.
“Nowhere else in California has a testing program of this magnitude been so quickly and successfully conducted,” the company said in a statement released Tuesday. “Over the coming weeks, Foster Farms will be conducting regular testing throughout the Livingston complex, aimed at monitoring and resolving COVID-19 prevalence to reduce the risk to our employees.”
Foster Farms said it conducted 4,800 additional COVID-19 tests during the shutdown and detected the virus in just 1% of the employees. “The few employees that did test positive have been advised to self-isolate and will receive all appropriate medical leave benefits; they have our hope for a quick recovery,” the company said.
For more news, go to www.Agri-Pulse.com.
