Thursday, April 23, 2020

Checkpoints, Curfews, Airlifts: Virus Rips Through Navajo Nation


Police officers from the Navajo Police setting up a road block in Window Rock, Ariz., on April 3. Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

By Simon Romero -NEW YORK TIMES- April 20, 2020

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — When Chad Yazzie joined the Navajo Police Department just a few months ago, he expected to issue speeding tickets or break up the occasional fistfight.

But the coronavirus is now tearing across the largest Indian reservation in the United States. The Navajo Nation’s casualty count is eclipsing that of states with much larger populations, placing the rookie cop on the front lines.

“My job is to tell our people to take this virus seriously or face the consequences,” Officer Yazzie, 24, said as he set up a police roadblock outside the town of Window Rock to enforce the tribal nation’s 8 p.m. curfew.


UTAH 25 MILES COLORADO NAVAJO NATION ARIZONA
NEW MEXICO HOPI RESERVATION
Window Rock Flagstaff By The New York Times

Faced with an alarming spike in deaths from what the tribal health department calls Dikos Ntsaaígíí-19 — or Covid-19 — Navajo officials are putting up checkpoints, assembling field hospitals and threatening curfew violators with 30 days in jail or a $1,000 fine.
The measures are part of a scramble to protect more than 150,000 people on the vast Navajo reservation, which stretches 27,000 square miles across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, and tens of thousands of others who live in towns bordering the Navajo Nation. As of Wednesday night, the virus had killed 20 people on the reservation, compared with 16 in the entire state of New Mexico, which has a population 13 times larger.

Image“My job is to tell our people to take this virus seriously or face the consequences,” said Chad Yazzie, an officer with the Navajo Police Department.Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

Navajo officials, who have traced the surge in the reservation’s coronavirus cases to a March 7 rally held by an evangelical church, warn that infections will rise in the weeks ahead, potentially reaching a peak in about a month.

Several factors — including a high prevalence of diseases like diabetes, scarcity of running water, and homes with several generations living under the same roof — have enabled the virus to spread with exceptional speed, according to epidemiologists.

SOLIDARITY IN UNEMPLOYMENT
Online communities are set up by unemployed workers to help navigate the nightmare of crashed websites and confusing regulations.


While the Navajo Nation may not technically be at war with the virus, it does not feel at peace either.

The Arizona National Guard this month began airlifting protective masks, gowns and other equipment, using Blackhawk helicopters to deliver it to Kayenta, a town of 5,200 people near the sandstone buttes of Monument Valley.

Guard members also converted a community center in Chinle into a 50-bed field hospital for quarantining people who have tested positive for the virus. And personnel visited a triage tent set up by Tuba City, near the Navajo Nation’s western edge.

Going further, Navajo authorities said their entire nation would be under curfew for 57 continuous hours, from Friday at 8 p.m. until Monday at 5 a.m. The holiday weekend offers the opportunity to practice extreme social distancing, the authorities said. Unlike many stay-at-home orders around the nation, the Navajo curfews are being enforced with checkpoints and patrols. Violators can face jail time and hefty fines.

Fearing pushback, the chief of the Navajo Police, Phillip Francisco, said that anyone knowingly exposing officers to the coronavirus would be charged with battery against a police officer.


Factors like a high prevalence of diabetes, a scarcity of running water and multigenerational living arrangements have enabled the virus to spread with exceptional speed through the Navajo Nation.Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
The Navajo Nation’s president, Jonathan Nez, who has begun wearing a mask in public, said in a telephone interview that authorities were working under the assumption that the reservation’s peak in cases could be about a month away, in early to mid-May.

Mr. Nez said he was growing exasperated with delays in receiving federal emergency funds and by the requirements that tribal nations, unlike cities and counties, must apply for grants to receive money from federal stimulus legislation. The extra hurdles have led to weeks of additional bureaucratic delays, he said.

“We’re barely getting bits and pieces,” Mr. Nez said. “You have counties, municipalities, already taking advantage of these funds, and tribes are over here writing our applications and turning it in and waiting weeks to get what we need.”

The crisis among the Diné, as many Navajos prefer to call themselves, is echoing throughout Indian Country. Around the United States, and especially in New Mexico, tribal leaders have started barring nonresidents from reservations. In South Dakota, the Oglala Sioux tribe announced a 72-hour lockdown after a resident of the Pine Ridge reservation tested positive for the coronavirus. The Blackfeet and the Northern Cheyenne tribal nations in Montana have announced curfews.

The Hopi reservation, which is surrounded entirely by the Navajo Nation and includes some of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the United States, issued its own stay-at-home order. Signaling vulnerabilities elsewhere in the Southwest, large clusters of cases emerged this week in San Felipe Pueblo and Zia Pueblo, two of New Mexico’s 23 federally recognized tribal nations.


A grocery store on the Navajo reservation in Window Rock, Ariz.Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

Native American leaders say they are also dealing with the potential for racist attacks as outsiders try to cast blame for the pandemic on tribal citizens.

Police in Page, an Arizona town bordering the Navajo Nation, said this week that they had arrested a 34-year-old man, Daniel Franzen, on suspicion of attempting to incite an act of terrorism. Mr. Franzen in a Facebook post had called for using “lethal force” against Navajos because they were, in his view, “100 percent infected” with the virus, the Page Police Department said in a statement.

Infectious disease specialists say the virus is thought to have arrived on the reservation later than in other parts of the United States. It began spreading rapidly after it was detected among members of the Church of the Nazarene, an evangelical congregation in the outpost of Chilchinbeto near the Arizona-Utah border.

Families traveled from far-flung parts of the Navajo Nation to attend the rally, which included a prayer service in response to the pandemic already spreading in parts of the country.

Dr. Laura Hammitt, director of the infectious disease prevention program at the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health, listed several factors that have made citizens of the Navajo Nation especially vulnerable to the coronavirus.

The scarcity of running water on the reservation, she said, makes it harder to wash hands. There are also pre-existing health conditions, including respiratory problems caused by indoor pollution because of the wood and coal used to heat many Navajo homes.


Facing a spike in deaths, Navajo officials are scrambling to respond. Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

Exceptionally close-knit families, which have helped the Navajos endure extreme hardships, may also now heighten exposure to the virus.

“Instead of urban crowding in high-density cities like New York, you have indoor crowding with several generations living under the same roof,” she said.

That explains the special need for field hospitals where patients who have tested positive for the virus can recuperate away from their families. Officials are also searching for ways to mitigate the spread of the virus in the so-called border towns where many Diné live.

For instance, in addition to the field hospitals assembled by the Arizona National Guard, the iconic El Rancho Hotel in the town of Gallup near the Navajo Nation is planning to house homeless people who have developed respiratory problems in one of its buildings.

Despite such measures, fear is building on parts of the reservation, and some are taking it upon themselves to protect their families.

In a culture prizing communal contact, Julian Parrish, a computer science high school teacher in Chinle, said he and his girlfriend had taken the unusual step of going on Facebook to request that visitors refrain from coming to their home unannounced.

Mr. Parrish, 34, explained that he is prediabetic, his girlfriend is pregnant and her son has asthma that sometimes requires trips to the emergency room.

“We don’t want to go anywhere near the hospital at this time,” Mr. Parrish said. “No one knows where the hell this virus is going next.”


The 200-strong Navajo Nation police force is now charged with enforcing the 8 p.m. curfew every night in towns and along lonely stretches of road that connect far-flung homesteads and sheep ranches.Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

As the death count climbs, the virus is drawing grim comparisons with previous epidemics that shaped the history of the Diné. From the start of the European conquest, outbreaks of smallpox, bubonic plague and typhus ravaged the tribe.

A century ago, the influenza pandemic of 1918 spread to the most remote corners of the reservation, killing thousands. Estimates put the mortality rate as high as 10 percent; accounts from that time described how some survivors died from starvation with no one left to care for them.

More recently, a hantavirus outbreak in the region in 1993 stirred fear across the Navajo Nation. The virus, carried by deer mice, left 13 dead including young, otherwise healthy people who developed sudden respiratory failure.

Despite the rising death toll from the newest virus, epidemiologists say the Diné may have advantages in the mitigation fight that other tribal nations do not.

They point to the nation’s relatively large number of diabetes specialists, who could help with outreach or trace the spread of the virus. Robust civil society groups within the reservation have also sprung into action, with volunteers replenishing water tanks for hundreds of families.

As one of the largest tribal nations in the United States, the Diné, who number more than 330,000 on the reservation and beyond, can also draw on resources unavailable to other tribes.

That includes the 200-strong police force now charged with enforcing the curfew every night in towns and along lonely stretches of road that connect far-flung homesteads and sheep ranches.
“We have to get the situation under control,” Officer Yazzie said, between chasing down curfew violators, writing citations and telling motorists over a loudspeaker to “just go home” where it was safe.

“If we don’t do this,” he said, “it’s our own families at risk.”


Navajo officials warn that infections will surge in the weeks ahead, potentially reaching a peak in about a month.Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times


Simon Romero is a national correspondent based in Albuquerque, covering immigration and other issues. He was previously the bureau chief in Brazil and in Caracas, Venezuela, and reported on the global energy industry from Houston. @viaSimonRomero

A version of this article appears in print on April 10, 2020, Section A, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: Navajos Race to Shield Reservation After a Sharp Rise in Deaths. 
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=NAVAJO


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Amazon Workers Plan Friday Sickout to Protest Activist Firings


Bloomberg News Matt Day April 23, 2020

(Bloomberg) — Amazon.com Inc. employee climate activists have called for a walkout Friday to protest the firing of two of their leaders and to show solidarity with warehouse workers who continue to pick, pack and ship orders during the pandemic.

But with mass gatherings banned and high unemployment making some workers loath to antagonize their bosses, the organizers could struggle to get their message out. More than 100 employees have committed to striking — which essentially means calling in sick — and some Amazonians who aren’t part of the movement say fears of being fired will likely curb participation.

“In some ways, it’s less risky for people to participate” because their faces won’t end up on the news, said Maren Costa, a member of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, who, along with her colleague Emily Cunningham, was fired on April 10. “But it’s going to be harder to have that impact. A picture says 1,000 words. How do you take a picture of this?”

An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment on Friday’s planned strike.

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice began in late 2018 as a gathering of people who shared concerns about climate change and their employer’s role in it. They began a media and shareholder vote push to get the company to do more.

Amazon to that point had backed renewable energy projects and was working on environmentally friendly packaging. But it had stopped short of the sustainability disclosures and commitments embraced by many retail and technology companies. That changed in September, when Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos pledged to make Amazon carbon neutral by 2040.

Amazon fires three reported critics of warehouse conditions in pandemic

Amazon fires two employees critical of warehouse working conditions

The employees pushed for more ambitious policies, starting with a rally outside of Amazon’s Seattle headquarters the next day, a walkout timed to line up with youth-led climate strikes occurring around the world. When Amazon threatened to dismiss members of the group who continued to speak to the media without authorization, some 400 employees signed their names to statements made in defiance of the stricter communications policy.

As coronavirus cases spread in Amazon’s warehouses, the climate activists broadened their mission to agitate for workers complaining about a lack of safety measures and poor communication from management. Amazon earlier this month confirmed the first publicly reported death of one of its employees suffering from Covid-19, and the retailer has told employees in dozens of depots across the U.S. of cases of the disease within their ranks. Spokespeople have declined to provide a tally of ill employees.

Amazon has said critiques of its safety measures are unfounded, and Costa and Cunningham were dismissed shortly after their group circulated an invitation to Amazon employees to hear from warehouse workers on a live stream.

Amazon said the two were fired for unspecified violations of company policy; both had previously been warned about speaking to the media without authorization. “We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies,” Amazon said in a statement last week.

Costa and Cunningham say they were dismissed because they sought to shine a spotlight on warehouse working conditions. “That’s the bomb that set them off,” Costa said.

Employees have previously pushed Amazon to act on social and health care issues, including publicly supporting legislation legalizing same-sex marriage and expanding health care benefits for transgender employees.

A person familiar with Amazon’s corporate response to the climate activists, but not authorized to speak publicly about it, said the company might have tolerated a group focused around activism on a single issue.

But some executives worried that the group would fuel activism on a range of other issues, this person said, as well as strikes among warehouse workers concerned about their safety during the pandemic.

Amazon has some 800,000 employees globally. Executives and spokespeople have responded to recent walkouts by workers in Amazon warehouses by portraying strikers as a tiny sliver of the workforce. The climate group, which has planned another live stream with warehouse workers for Friday, is considering ways to show the scale of the sickout using social media.

“We know that many of our colleagues are going to be scared by this,” Costa said of her firing. “But we hope that what we’ve done already, and what we’ll continue to do, is inspire our friends and colleagues to fight for what’s right.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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Poultry Worker’s Death Highlights Spread of Coronavirus in Meat Plants

Some employees are coming in sick, and one woman died after being ordered back to work. “Our work conditions are out of control,” a longtime Tyson employee said.


Annie Grant, front row center, during a family reunion, in a photo provided by her family. Ms. Grant, a Tyson Foods worker, died on Thursday after spending more than a week on a ventilator.



By Miriam Jordan and Caitlin Dickerson April 9, 202


Annie Grant, 55, had been feverish for two nights. Worried about the coronavirus outbreak, her adult children had begged her to stay home rather than return to the frigid poultry plant in Georgia where she had been on the packing line for nearly 15 years.

But on the third day she was ill, they got a text from their mother. “They told me I had to come back to work,” it said.

Ms. Grant ended up returning home, and died in a hospital on Thursday morning after fighting for her life on a ventilator for more than a week. Two other workers at the Tyson Foods poultry plant where she worked in Camilla, Ga., have also died in recent days.


“My mom said the guy at the plant said they had to work to feed America. But my mom was sick,” said one of Ms. Grant’s sons, Willie Martin, 34, a teacher in South Carolina. He said he watched on his phone as his mother took her last breath.


The coronavirus pandemic has reached the processing plants where workers typically stand elbow-to-elbow to do the low-wage work of cutting, deboning and packing the chicken and beef that Americans savor. Some plants have offered financial incentives to keep them on the job, but the virus’s swift spread is causing illness and forcing plants to close.

Smithfield Foods’ pork plant in Sioux Falls, S.D., announced Thursday that it would close temporarily, after more than 80 employees tested positive for the coronavirus. Workers have come down with Covid-19 in several poultry plants in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.

JBS USA, the world’s largest meat processor, confirmed the death of one worker at a Colorado facility and shuttered a plant in Pennsylvania for two weeks. Cargill this week also closed a facility in Pennsylvania, where it produces steaks, ground beef and ground pork. Tyson halted operations at a pork plant in Iowa after more than two dozen workers tested positive.

Industry analysts said the plant closures were unlikely to result in serious disruptions to the food supply.

But if the pandemic keeps plants shuttered for an extended period, some products could become harder to find in stores, said Christine McCracken, a meat industry analyst at Rabobank in New York. “If workers don’t feel safe, they may not come back, and we don’t have a large pool of people that are lining up to work in these plants,” she said.

SOLIDARITY IN UNEMPLOYMENT
Online communities are set up by unemployed workers to help navigate the nightmare of crashed websites and confusing regulations.

At some plants, workers have staged walkouts over concerns that they are not being properly protected. But an untold number remain on the job, most of them African-Americans, Latinos and immigrants.

The Trump administration has urged food-supply workers to step up to meet growing demand. “You are vital,” Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday. “You are giving a great service to the people of the United States of America and we need you to continue, as a part of what we call critical infrastructure, to show up and do your job.”

Mr. Pence said the administration would work “tirelessly” to ensure the workers’ safety.

There is no evidence that the coronavirus can be transmitted through food, but public health experts have advised consumers to wipe down packaging because the virus could survive on those surfaces for days.

Several major meat-processing outfits are offering workers cash incentives to continue showing up for work.

At the Tyson plant in Camilla, the company offered its 2,100 workers a $500 bonus if they worked in April, May and June without missing a day.

EMPTY ROADS
Traffic congestion, at its lowest in decades, is one more measure of how the pandemic has affected the country.

Many of the employees live a 15-minute drive away in Albany, Ga., which has emerged as one of the epicenters of the coronavirus outbreak.

“How many more have to fight for their life, how many more families got to suffer before they realize we are more important than their production,” said Tanisha Isom, 36, a deboner on line four at the Camilla plant. She recently learned that she had bronchitis and missed two weeks of work.

She has continued to cough, she said, with a low-grade fever and fatigue — and hopes to finally get tested for the coronavirus later this week.

“We are crying out for help but no one is listening,” said Ms. Isom, who has worked at Tyson for years and earns $12.95 an hour.

“Our work conditions are out of control. We literally work shoulder to shoulder daily,” she said. She said that two people she works closely with are currently fighting for their lives.

Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson Foods, said the company was taking the temperature of workers before they entered and had implemented social-distancing measures. These included dividers between work stations and slower production lines to widen the space between workers.

If there is a confirmed case at one site, “we notify anyone who has been in close contact with the person and instruct them to go home and self-quarantine,” he said. He noted that workers who are sick continue to be paid while off the job.

He also said that Tyson was coordinating with federal agencies to secure “an adequate supply of protective face coverings for production workers” and other protective coverings.

But workers and union leaders said the response by Tyson and other chicken companies, which produce the bulk of the nation’s meat supply, has been inadequate.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which represents thousands of poultry processing workers in the South, said that it had been “imploring” producers to take steps to protect workers’ safety while securing the nation’s food supply chain.

“Day after day we hear reports of our members contracting the Covid-19 virus and even succumbing to it,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the union’s president. “The poultry industry can and must do better to swiftly protect workers.”

“Saying you are still scrambling for protective supplies when much of the supply chain has been protecting workers for weeks is a pathetic excuse for companies that make billions in profits annually,” he said.

Fatalities among workers have lent urgency to the demands for protection.

Cameron Bruett, a spokesman for JBS, confirmed that an older man who had worked for 30 years at its beef plant in Greeley, Colo., recently died from complications of Covid-19.

Operations have been halted at a plant the company operates in Souderton, Pa., until April 16, after several managers displayed “flulike symptoms,” he said.

In at least seven states, workers at Cargill, the nation’s third-largest meat producer, have tested positive for the virus, according to Dan Sullivan, a company spokesman

Mr. Sullivan confirmed that Cargill had closed a plant in Hazleton, Pa., after several employees tested positive.

The federal government has deemed food-industry workers essential, and Cargill has encouraged employees to stay on the job through the pandemic with extra pay and bonus offers. Workers are eligible for up to 80 hours of paid leave for any virus-related absence.

But some employees say they, like Ms. Grant in Georgia, feel pressure to come to work, and others say they cannot afford to remain at home past any paid sick leave.

Jose Aguilar, a representative of the union in Alabama, said many immigrant workers might not be eligible for unemployment benefits or payments from the federal stimulus package.

“For the immigrant population, it’s really sad because right now, there are a lot of people who don’t have a choice,” he said. “Almost everybody is going to work because they need money.”

A woman who has worked for 20 years at Pilgrim’s Pride in Guntersville, Ala., said that the virus was spreading in the meat packing area, where employees work side by side and social distancing is nearly impossible. Recently, the company took measures to bolster safety, she said.

“There are people cleaning the plant; they are checking our temperatures every time we come in the morning; they’re doing all that. They’re starting to give us masks,” said the woman, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution from her employer.

“But of course we’re worried because the truth is we don’t know if more people are going to get sick,” she said.

Pilgrim’s Pride did not respond to a request for comment. The company’s Facebook page said that workers who show symptoms were being told to stay home.

On Facebook, several employees of the Tyson plant in Camilla questioned why those who had been working alongside people who tested positive had not been told to stay away. Others expressed frustration that the facility remained open at all.

Shynekia Emanuel, who works nights on the deboning line in Camilla, said that his shift supervisors — the same people who had been checking workers’ temperatures — had tested positive for the virus.

A company spokesman said Tyson would not discuss specific employees.

Mr. Emanuel, who said that he was particularly vulnerable to the virus because he has Crohn’s disease, will not report to work again until the pandemic has passed.

“Enough is enough,” he said. “Nobody wants to risk their lives over some chicken. Sorry. My life and my son’s life is way more important.”

Before checking herself into a hospital, Ms. Grant had told her children that several co-workers on her line had been absent.

“If they had taken proper precautions, they would have prevented people from getting it,” her son said. “This just isn’t right. It’s about saving multiple lives.”\

Correction: April 9, 2020

An earlier version of this article misspelled the names of two places. The JBS employee in Colorado who died of complications from Covid-19 lived in Greeley, not Greely. And the plant that Cargill closed in Pennsylvania was in Hazleton, not Hazelton.

Miriam Jordan is a national immigration correspondent. She reports from a grassroots perspective on the impact of immigration policy. She has been a reporter in Mexico, Israel, Hong Kong, India and Brazil. @mirjordan

Caitlin Dickerson is a Peabody Award-winning reporter based in New York who covers immigration. She has broken stories on asylum, detention and deportation policy, as well as the treatment of immigrant children in government custody. @itscaitlinhd

A version of this article appears in print on April 10, 2020, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Those Who Feed the U.S. Fear Their Lives Are Being Put at Risk


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OHS investigating Canada's largest COVID-19 outbreak at meat plant after worker's death
580 cases of coronavirus linked to Cargill meat-processing plant south of Calgary

Sarah Rieger · CBC News · Posted: Apr 22, 2020
The Cargill meat-packing plant near High River, Alta., is the site of a COVID-19 outbreak that has led to hundreds of confirmed cases. (Charlotte Dumoulin/Radio-Canada)

Alberta Occupational Health and Safety is investigating two outbreaks of COVID-19 at Alberta meat-processing plants, one of which is the largest outbreak linked to a single site in Canada.

There are now 580 cases linked to the outbreak at the Cargill facility near High River, 440 of whom are Cargill employees.

One worker, a woman of Vietnamese background in her sixties, has died. Her husband is also sick and is being treated in hospital. The facility said Monday it would temporarily shut down as soon as it finished processing the meat already in the plant.

Health and safety inspection of Alberta meat plant linked to 515 COVID-19 cases was done by video call

Another Alberta meat plant experiencing an outbreak, JBS in Brooks, remains open but production has been reduced to one shift. There are now 96 cases linked to that plant.

A worker at JBS has died, as well as another person in the community, and Alberta Health Services is investigating to confirm if those deaths are due to the COVID-19 outbreak at the plant.


Nobody wants to eat a hamburger that somebody had to die to produce.- Thomas Hesse, UFCW Local 401

Alberta's deputy minister of labour said investigations into both plants have been opened by OHS, and said there will be no further comment until the investigations are complete.

The union brought the first 38 cases of COVID-19 at the plant to the attention of media on April 13, as some employees at the facility accused the company of ignoring physical-distancing protocols and trying to lure them back to work from self-isolation.

Two days later, an inspector from the provincial Occupational Health and Safety — which has a mandate to ensure Alberta workplaces are operating in a way that is healthy and safe for employees — conducted an inspection from a remote location via a live video call.

OHS deemed the plant safe to remain open.


A COVID-19 outbreak at the Cargill meat processing plant in High River, Alta., has forced the facility to temporarily close, raising concerns about beef prices and supply. 3:03

Thomas Hesse, president of UFCW Local 401, which represents workers at the plant, called for the facility to close weeks ago and has since called for an inquiry into the worker's death.

"Nobody wants to eat a hamburger that somebody had to die to produce," said Hesse.

What led to Alberta's biggest outbreak? Cargill meat plant's hundreds of COVID-19 cases

In addition to an OHS fatality inquiry, the union has called for an independent investigation into Cargill, and the Alberta Federation of Labour has asked for a criminal investigation.

"It hits home on a personal level, but it also makes me very, very angry because from our perspective, this is a fatality that could have been avoided," Gil McGowan, president of the AFL said.

McGowan said it has been difficult to get updates, as he said the government and OHS are only communicating with the company, not the workers or union.

RCMP said it does not have an open investigation into the worker's death at this time.

Many workers at Cargill are members of a tight-knit Filipino community, who live in large households and carpool to work together.

Workers fear for their job security, safetyCalgarian Cesar Cala Cala, a volunteer with the Philippines Emergency Response Taskforce, said some workers feel they are being unfairly blamed for the outbreak — and are deeply concerned about their job security and safety.

"Is the plant a safe place to work? And then are their jobs secure? Many of the temporary foreign workers, their stay in Canada is based on their work visa connected to Cargill," he said.

Watch Workers raised concerns about Alberta meat processing plant closed by COVID-19 outbreak
Employees at the Cargill meat processing plant raised concerns about public health measures not being followed two weeks before a COVID-19 outbreak forced the plant to close
People of colour are over-represented in the meat processing industry, according to an economist, and census data shows those in the industry make less than the average industrial wage.

AHS has a dedicated task force of 200 workers responding to the outbreak, and translation services are being used to communicate with workers and their families who speak English as a second language.

Five employees at Seasons Retirement Communities in High River have now also tested positive for COVID-19; three of whom are married to meat-packing workers at Cargill.


Why Alberta's Filipino community has been hit particularly hard by this pandemic. 8:30

On Wednesday, Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said the majority of Cargill workers who have tested positive live in Calgary, and commute to High River.

He said earlier in the week, city flags were lowered to half mast to mark the victims of the Nova Scotia killings, and said those flags will remain lowered to memorialize the victims of COVID-19.

"That is a reminder that our neighbours have died. People in our community have died," he said.

Premier Jason Kenney said Wednesday the JBS plant will remain open with necessary health and safety precautions in place as long as health officials say it is safe to do so, as it's important to maintain the country's food supply.

There are now 3,401 cases of COVID-19 in Alberta, and 66 people have died. Just over 17 per cent of cases in the province are linked to the Cargill outbreak.

The National Farmer's Union said in an emailed release that the sites of the two outbreaks represent 85 per cent of Canada's total beef supply.

"Farmers need emergency support so we can take care of our livestock until the plants ramp up again. Health and safety come first, but you can't tell the cows to stop eating and growing until the crisis is over," said Ian Robson, an NFU board member, in an emailed release.

With files from Erin Collins, Charlotte Dumoulin, Carolyn Dunn and Colleen Underwood


Southern Alberta Filipino community ‘worried for our lives’ as members test positive for COVID-19

BY JILL CROTEAU GLOBAL NEWS April 22, 2020 

WATCH: The workers at a Cargill meat plant in Alberta -- and their families -- are no doubt on edge, and have been for weeks. The novel coronavirus has significantly impacted the Filipino community in the area because many are employed at the plant and have tested positive. Jill Croteau reports.
https://globalnews.ca/video/rd/2da4dd7e-84f7-11ea-9793-0242ac110003/?jwsource=cl

Jocelyn Ruiz and her family came to Canada from the Philippines for a better life, one with more opportunity and hope. But she said her future has felt a little more uncertain with the spread of COVID-19. Both she and her husband and two other adults living in her High River home tested positive for the virus.

“Am I going to die? How about my family and my children?” Ruiz said.TWEET THIS

“I was so scared, I was so very fearful, that anxiety and depression came in and I have to fight it with positive thoughts. There are a lot of people who survive it and I want to be one of those.”

READ MORE: Alberta sees 5 more COVID-19 deaths, 1st case on First Nation

They have all been isolating for over 2 weeks in their High River home and are in recovery. Ruiz is relieved the Cargill processing plant shut down. Her husband’s cousin who rents a room downstairs works at Cargill, and he and his wife got infected by the virus. He was the first to show symptoms. 

“The guy living with us works with Cargill and it was from his job. There is no social distancing at all, so what happened is, it came from his work and it was brought to the household. That’s based on my experience. It’s not from the household going to the company. No,” Ruiz said.

She said multiple people living in one household is common within the Filipino community because they are supporting each other as they get settled in a new country.

“We are helping them, some of them are renting a house say seven of them will rent together, not everyone can afford a house,” Ruiz said.


READ MORE: Albertans struggling to return home from the Philippines amid COVID-19

The coronavirus has hit the Filipino community particularly hard. Elma Ton also lives with someone who tested positive, another employee at Cargill.

“I have a renter. He received his swab test results and it came back positive so it’s been stressful. We are all emotional with what is happening right now,” Ton said. “We feel we are helpless.”

“Every household that I know with a Filipino, there is somebody tested positive in every household that I know.

Ton’s husband works at the meat processing plant too, and is concerned about him returning to work.

“I’m worried for my children, especially my eldest one, because she has high blood pressure,” Ton said. “We are all worried for our lives.”

The union supporting the 2000 workers at the Cargill plant said more needs to be done to reassure families when they return to work. Thomas Hesse, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) President, is advocating for them to be heard. 

“No one should have to die for us to eat a hamburger,” Hesse said

“These plants are petri dishes of infection; where hundreds if not thousands are working in close proximity. It has its origin, we believe, in these crowded plants.
Global News reached out to Cargill officials and did not receive a response in time for publication.


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2 Alberta meat plants affected by COVID-19 make up 70% of Canada’s beef processing capabilities


BY ALEKSANDRA SAGAN THE CANADIAN PRESS  April 23, 2020 

Officials announced Monday that the Cargill meat-processing plant would be temporarily shut down. Jill Croteau reports.

The temporary closure of an Alberta meat processing facility due to a COVID-19 outbreak isn’t expected to result in beef shortages, but the reduction in capacity will mean that ranchers will bear the brunt as their costs rise and prices for their product fall.

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Cargill Inc.’s High River, Alta., plant temporarily shuttered operations Monday after a worker died from the coronavirus and hundreds of other employees tested positive.

READ MORE: 1 death connected to Cargill meat plant in High River as plant ‘idles’ processes

Meanwhile, a second plant — JBS plant in Brooks, Alta. — recorded 96 cases as of Wednesday. It has reduced operations, according to the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, which represents the 60,000 beef farms and feedlots in the country.

The CCA says it is trying to ensure the facility remains open, though a union representing federal meat inspectors says it’s a matter of time before it is forced to temporarily halt production

These two facilities make up 70 per cent of Canada’s beef processing capabilities, according to the CCA.

Occupational Health and Safety is conducting investigations looking into “potential exposure of workers” to the novel coronavirus at both the Cargill and JBS plants.

Alberta’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw confirmed Wednesday one JBS worker had died but the cause of death is not known. It is not known to be a case of COVID-19, she said, so an investigation is taking place to determine the cause.


READ MORE: Alberta sees 5 more COVID-19 deaths, 1st case on First NationAlone, the Cargill plant processes some 4,500 head of cattle daily or more than one-third of the country’s total beef-processing capacity.

With the Cargill closure and JBS’s reduction, Canada has likely seen a reduction of nearly 40 per cent in its processing capacity, said Mike von Massow, an associate professor in the food, agricultural and resource economics department at The University of Guelph.

However, shoppers aren’t likely to see empty freezers in the grocery store meat section any time soon.

“In the short run, I don’t think we as consumers will see any tangible difference,” he said.

READ MORE: Coronavirus: Ranchers feel pain of low cattle prices while consumers told not to expect deals on beef

The prime minister echoed that message Tuesday, reassuring Canadians they would continue to find beef products on grocery shelves.

“We are not at this point anticipating shortages of beef, but prices might go up,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during his daily update on the coronavirus pandemic.

“We will of course be monitoring that very, very carefully.”
COVID-19: Brooks mayor responds to skyrocketing confirmed cases, meat plant concerns

Beef producers and associations have said they will prioritize ensuring Canadian supply before exports, he said.

Canada exports about 45 per cent of its beef and cattle production annually, according to the national association, and ships to 56 countries, with the U.S. receiving 74 per cent of beef exports.

The closure is expected to be brief.

READ MORE: Coronavirus: Employee at Cargill plant died within days of feeling ill, union says another is critical

It’s likely the Cargill plant will be closed for about two weeks — the duration of the virus’s incubation period, said von Massow. That’s roughly how long the temporary closure of a pork processing plant in Quebec lasted.

Olymel announced March 29 it would temporarily close its hog slaughter and cutting plant in Yamachiche, Que., for 14 days after nine plant employees tested positive for COVID-19. The closure gave employees the time to self-isolate at the recommendation of the public health department. The plant resumed operations on April 14.

A two-week closure allows staff to self-isolate to prevent further spread, deep clean a facility and implement any other measures to help physical distancing after reopening, said von Massow.


READ MORE: How does COVID-19 contact tracing work? Alberta doctor explains

During a closure, inventories can be diverted and processing capacity can be increased at other facilities to avoid a shortage, he said. It would take months-long closures, as well as multiple plants shuttering to create a possible shortage.

Ranchers, though, are likely to suffer even from these short-term closures, he said.

If they have to send their cattle further for processing, transportation costs rise and that will come out of the price they’re paid for their product. If they decide to hang on to their animals longer, they’ll face increased overhead costs, like feed, said von Massow.

In the past week, ranchers have seen a nearly 30 per cent drop in price, said Dennis Laycraft, executive vice president at CCA.

The group’s economic scenarios project the industry could lose more than $500 million in revenue by the end of June. It is calling for immediate government action.

That includes improving the availability of cash advances, said Laycraft.

“It’s not easy to deal with lenders when the value of your product is falling sharply and no one’s really sure what it’ll be worth in that environment.”

The group also wants price insurance program premiums brought back down to normal levels, he said.

“For young and newer producers that have more debt, that’s a pretty important thing.”

© 2020 The Canadian Press
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A COVID-19 outbreak in a Cargill plant at High River, Alberta has shut down almost half of Canada’s beef supply, leaving many farmers with no place to sell their cattle. Nearly all beef produced in Canada is processed by three high-volume, high-throughput meat packing plants: Cargill’s High River facility, the JBS plant in Brooks, Alberta and the smaller Cargill plant in Guelph, Ontario. The two Alberta plants have 85% of Canada’s beef slaughter capacity and both are now grappling with COVID-19 outbreaks. While this choke point gives US-based Cargill and Brazilian JBS tremendous power over both cattle prices paid to farmers and the grocery store beef prices paid by consumers, the pandemic outbreaks show it is also one of the weakest links in Canada’s food system.


This week a major COVID-19 outbreak in Cargill’s Alberta plant and a smaller outbreak at the JBS plant have required slow-downs at the JBS plant and a shut-down of the Cargill facility to protect the health of plant workers and the wider community. This also has a domino effect through the food system. Demand for cattle has collapsed, and if supplies dwindle, retail beef prices will likely rise. Without intervention, the price difference between the price of cattle and grocery store beef will end up harming both farmers and consumers while enhancing the already large profits of JBS and Cargill.


“Excessive concentration of ownership and centralization of beef processing, supported and encouraged by our federal and provincial governments, has now put the health of workers, the beef supply and the livelihoods of thousands of farmers in jeopardy,” said Iain Aitken, National Farmers Union (NFU) member and Manitoba beef producer. “We extend our heartfelt condolences to the loved ones of the Cargill worker who lost her life to COVID 19.”


“Farmers need emergency support so we can take care of our livestock until the plants ramp up again. Health and safety come first, but you can’t tell the cows to stop eating and growing until the crisis is over,” said Ian Robson, Deleau Manitoba mixed farmer and NFU Board member. “We need a price floor to make sure that Cargill and JBS don’t take advantage of this crisis to reduce prices. Today’s government must not make the same kind of mistakes as during the BSE Mad Cow crisis when the giant packers pocketed support program money and put hundreds of family farms out of business.”


The NFU also urges emergency support to lay the groundwork for a more resilient and fair meat sector in Canada.


“The NFU’s vision is for a food policy based on food sovereignty,” said Tim Dowling, grassfed beef producer from the Kingston, Ontario area. “Our food system would then support more family farmers providing more food for more Canadians by focussing on building up our capacity to serve local and regional markets across the country.”


In 2008 the NFU published a comprehensive study of Canada’s cattle industry, analysing the development meat packing companies’ concentration, the impacts on cattle prices for farmers, and offering solutions that would reorient the system towards a more resilient beef sector. Its recommendations are more valid than ever today.


“The COVID-19 crisis is a wake-up call and an opportunity to rebuild our economy in ways that work for people, and which have the resilience to manage the crisis conditions that will undoubtedly occur in the future,” concluded Aitken.


For the complete NFU cattle report, please visit The Farm Crisis and the Cattle Sector: Toward a New Analysis and New Solutions


– 30 –

PDF Concentration of meat packing makes Canada’s food system vulnerable 

April 22, 2020

Meat packing concentration makes Canada’s food system vulnerable

The National Farmers Union (NFU) offers heartfelt condolences to family and friends of the Cargill beef packing plant worker who lost her life to COVID-19 on April 20.

The COVID-19 pandemic is revealing many vulnerabilities in Canada’s food system. The excessive concentration of ownership and centralization of beef processing has put the health of workers, the beef supply and the livelihoods of thousands of farmers in jeopardy.

As of April 21, Cargill is finally idling its plant at High River, Alberta after one death, at least 358 cases ofCOVID-19 among workers and about 150 more confirmed cases related to the Cargill plant through


family and community spread. There is also a COVID-19 outbreak at the JBS meatpacking plant in Brooks, Alberta area, where 67 people have tested positive.


Cargill’s Alberta plant normally slaughters and processes 4,500 head of cattle per day, which is nearly half of Canada’s total beef processing capacity. The JBS Brook’s facility’s daily beef slaughter capacity is 4,200 head per day The Cargill beef plant in Guelph, Ontario has a slaughter capacity of 1,500 head per day.


Nearly all of the beef sold in Canadian grocery stores and exported from Canada comes from these three high-volume, high-throughput meat packing plants. Cargill’s High River facility, the JBS plant in Brooks, Alberta and the Cargill plant in Guelph, Ontario together process over 95% of the beef in Canada, as well as nearly all of Canada’s $3 billion worth of beef exports. Cargill, with headquarters in the USA, is the world’s largest private company. In 2018 the family members that control Cargill Inc. got $643 million in the company’s the biggest payout since 2010, according to Bloomberg. JBS is a Brazilian corporation and the world’s largest meat company. Its net profit in 2018 was nearly $US 50 billion, a 10% increase over the previous year. These two foreign-owned companies completely dominate Canada’s beef sector.


Canada has just 17 other federally licenced beef slaughter facilities, all small and many serving specialized markets. The provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have no federally licenced abattoirs for beef. Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan each have one facility; BC and Manitoba each have just two, all of them are small. There are also provincially licenced abattoirs, which in 2019 slaughtered a total of 153,859 head of cattle, the equivalent of 15 days of output from the threelargest federally inspected plants.


JBS and Cargill control the flow of beef through Canada’s food system and to export markets. Their three processing plants form a choke point that gives them undue influence over the price of cattle paid to farmers and the price of beef paid by consumers in the grocery store. While this choke point gives Cargill and JBS tremendous power, it is also one of the weakest links in Canada’s food system.


Slow-downs and shut-downs necessary to protect the health of plant workers also have a domino effect on cattle producers. Farmers expecting to sell their livestock find demand has collapsed. Prices are falling and farmers are faced with selling well below the cost of production or continuing to feed and care for cattle while waiting for an opportunity to sell. Meanwhile if grocery store supplies dwindle, retail beef prices will likely rise, especially if JBS and Cargill raise their wholesale prices. The price difference between what farmers are paid and what consumers pay for their meat will be captured by the big retailers and/or JBS and Cargill, to enhance these companies’ already large profits.


Health and safety for workers and the public must come first. The failure of Cargill and JBS to implement changes to permit safe operations during the pandemic is creating a larger crisis in the food system in addition to its health impacts. Farmers now require emergency support to allow them to continue feeding cattle that no longer have a market. 

Price floors must be put in place to ensure Cargill and JBS do not take advantage of this crisis to reduce prices they or their captive feedlot suppliers payfor cattle. The lessons of the BSE crisis must be applied to ensure that the giant packers do not take all the value of government support programs for themselves. Any emergency support for farmers and ranchers coping with the precipitous drop in demand must meet the needs of cow-calf producers, and independent feedlots and backgrounders.


The NFU also urges emergency support be designed to lay the groundwork for a more resilient and fair meat sector in Canada.


In 1988 there were 119 federally inspected beef packing plants in Canada, all were 100% Canadian owned. For the past three decades, Canadian governments have measured success in agriculture by export volumes. The measuring stick is Canada’s share of global exports – not the quality and value of food being produced for Canadians, the livelihoods of Canadian farmers, nor the prosperity of rural communities. The pursuit of maximum exports has resulted in a corporate beef sector that extracts all it can from workers, farmers, tax-payers, consumers and agricultural ecosystems.


The National Farmers Union advocates for a food sovereignty-based food policy for Canada that would promote more high-quality food produced by Canadian ranchers and farmers on the tables of families across the country. A key strategy to achieve this would be developing domestic markets and localized distribution systems with direct, fair and transparent distribution chains.


In 2008 the NFU published a comprehensive study of Canada cattle industry, analysing the development meat packing companies’ concentration, the impacts on cattle prices for farmers, and offering solutions that would reorient the system towards a more resilient beef sector. Its recommendations include:


 Create and implement a national meat strategy to better serve the economic, nutritional,
social, community development, food production, and environmental goals of Canadians in all regions.


 Shift the location, ownership, and conduct of our beef packing plants to reduce its geographic concentration (nearly all capacity is currently in southern Alberta) and ownership concentration, so that our packing plants are spread across the nation, focused on serving local and regional markets, under diversified ownership and providing meat of the highest possible nutrition and safety.


 Ban captive supply – feedlots owned or controlled by JBS and Cargill which they use to depress prices paid to producers.


 Tailor food safety regulations to encourage local abattoirs to develop Canadian markets for organic beef, grass-finished beef, bison, and other specialty livestock and that create high-value deli meats and processed foods.


 Recognize that dispersed local abattoirs with shorter supply chains are also key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from our meat production system.


These recommendations are more valid than ever today. The COVID-19 crisis is a wake-up call and an opportunity to rebuild our economy in ways that work for people, and which have the resilience to manage the crisis conditions that will undoubtedly occur in the future.



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