Food Protection Trends - November/December 2022 - 430

Multiple government institutions have issued
documents relevant to the mitigation of COVID-19
among workers in the food processing industry
Since the start of COVID-19 outbreak in the United
States in early March 2020, the CDC and other government
institutions have acted quickly through responding and
providing numerous documents containing resources or
guidelines about COVID-19 mitigation to the general public
and various industries. Specifically for the food processing
industry, the FDA published a dedicated site for the food and
agriculture sectors on 17 March 2020 (61), and the CDC and
OSHA jointly published the guidance documents " Meat and
Poultry Processing Workers and Employers " and " Protecting
Seafood Processing Workers from COVID-19 " on 26 April
2020 (8, 9).
Overall, the CDC has been at the forefront of responding
to the pandemic and served two major roles in COVID-19
mitigation. First, the CDC is the main platform for providing
COVID-19 information, from disease surveillance and summaries
of scientific studies to mitigation strategies. This leadership is
expected because the mandate of the CDC is to protect the
nation from health threats (4). Thus, the CDC provides detailed
resources and guidelines in all aspects of disease control (32).
In addition to general mitigation strategies such as face masking
(8, 9, 12, 15, 22-24, 29, 30, 34), virus testing (9-13, 16, 17, 25),
vaccination (20, 21, 26, 27, 33), contact tracing (8, 9, 12, 14,
16, 19), quarantine (8, 9, 14), and temperature screening (8, 9,
12) (Table 1), the CDC has also suggested workplace-specific
strategies to help combat virus spread at food processing facilities,
including increased ventilation (8, 9, 12, 31), production line
distancing, adjusted sick day policy, and physical barriers (8, 9,
12), and staggered break time and shifts and worker cohorting
(8, 9). The CDC's second role is to serve as a reference point for
other agencies to further develop more specialized guidelines.
For example, OSHA built industry-specific guidelines covering
agriculture, dentistry, emergency response and public safety, food
manufacturing and processing, health care, manufacturing, meat
and poultry processing, postmortem care, retail, and seafood
processing based upon the evidence-based documents that the
CDC had developed (47). Specifically for the food processing
industry, these guidelines were critically important for employers,
who relied on this information to implement and incorporate the
mitigation strategies into their processing facilities' daily routine to
control COVID-19 infection in the workplace.
Because numerous documents have been released by
various government agencies, our organized timeline of
when each relevant document was published and the themes
and categories of mitigations covered can be helpful for
interpreting the corresponding changes in the epidemiology of
COVID-19 in the food processing industry work environment.
Epidemiological research on COVID-19 in the United States,
including studies involving the food processing industry,
has included timing of interventions (mitigation strategies)
to illustrate the relation between disease transmission and
specific interventions (51, 66, 70). In a previous study, the
adoption speed of nonpharmaceutical interventions was
found to be associated with lower COVID-19 infection and
death rates (1). Because adoption of interventions is typically
preceded by publication of guidelines by government agencies
and presuming that the industry followed the guidelines, the
publishing time can be used as a proxy for the intervention
implementation time to study the impacts (e.g., COVID-19
relevant cases, deaths, and hospitalizations) of the various
interventions recommended in these guidelines.
In addition to the intended purpose to reduce the spread
of infection, some of these short-term mitigation strategies,
such as workplace disinfection and ventilation improvement,
can have long-term benefits for the food processing industry
because they could further improve the hygiene standards at
facilities and promote establishment of effective strategies that
reduce contamination with foodborne pathogens during the
food production process (54). Additionally, the presence of
a plan developed for infectious diseases at the workplace can
help food processing facilities prepare for similar pandemics in
the future (43).
Overall goals were to ensure the safety of workers and
maintain the food supply
Because the food and agriculture sectors were identified as
critical infrastructure sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic
(55), the two overarching goals of COVID-19 mitigation in the
food processing industry workplace have been (i) to ensure the
safety of the workers and (ii) to maintain the operation of food
processing facilities as part of critical infrastructure. In one of
the reviewed documents " COVID-19 Critical Infrastructure
Sector Response Planning, " the CDC (12) requires critical
infrastructure workers who have potentially been exposed to a
person with confirmed COVID-19 but are nonclose contacts
to get tested but allows them to continue working as long as
they remain asymptomatic and have not tested positive. In the
face of a global pandemic, it is critically important to put the
health of food processing industry employees at the highest
priority and to maintain facility operations to meet public
needs and to keep societal order. As the National Infrastructure
Simulation and Analysis Center modeled in a previous study,
a severe pandemic with 25% reduction in labor can reduce
food production by almost 50%, causing food shortages (42).
With SARS-CoV-2, a major practice to slow the spread of
infection has been social distancing at home, which would
result in modified daily activities and potentially increased
food demand (2). Any imbalance between demand and supply
can cause food price inflation, food shortage, and consequently
food insecurity if no action is taken (68). Therefore, as
employers develop COVID-19 mitigation programs for their
facilities, it is important to ensure the safety of the workers and
maintain food processing operations to strengthen the food
supply chain and avoid nationwide or, even worse, worldwide
food crises.
430 Food Protection Trends November/December
Food Protection Trends - November/December 2022

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