Food Protection Trends - January/February 2023 - 41

The COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred across major
industry sectors in the U.S., including poultry, beef and
pork (76), dairy (62), and fresh produce (41). From April
2020 to July 2021, >90,000 cases and 450 deaths related to
COVID-19 were reported across U.S. food industry sectors
(26). Some of these outbreaks have involved widespread
transmission of COVID-19 among employees, as was the
case for a central New York State greenhouse in which
more than half of the workers (171 of 300) tested positive
for the virus (41). Food and agriculture are among the
occupations most severely affected by excess deaths due
to COVID-19, according to a study comparing the total
number of deaths under two scenarios: one theoretical
scenario in which COVID-19 never happened (established
based on prepandemic data for 2018 and 2019) and one
scenario in which deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic
were projected (18). To improve the ability of the U.S. food
industry to more effectively and quickly respond to COVID19-related
disturbances and similar future disasters, it is
essential to understand the needs and concerns of the food
industry regarding the ongoing pandemic, and the impacts
(e.g., COVID-19-related deaths), challenges, and responses
to these challenges might differ across food industry
sectors. For instance, industry sectors providing employees
with housing and transportation might require additional
preventive measures to avoid contact between COVID-19infected
and healthy employees (13).
U.S. governmental institutions, such as the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA),
have published guidelines and checklists to inform and
guide the U.S. food industry and other businesses about the
correct implementation of physical distancing, biosafety, and
surveillance strategies to prevent COVID-19 cases (13, 16,
72, 73). The guidelines usually recommend the adoption of
multiple methods to physically distance workers, sanitize
and clean the workplace and workers' hands, enforce mask
wearing, and use surveillance tests to identify COVID-19
cases and prevent further spread. These guidelines were
established early in the COVID-19 pandemic (ca. June
2020) (13, 73) and before the widespread availability of
vaccines to reduce transmission in the workplace (late
2020 to early 2021) (16, 72). The proper implementation
of these strategies is considered important for reducing
the occurrence of COVID-19 cases in the workplace
and/or limiting the size of outbreaks. For example, air
ventilation and physical distancing were effective for
reducing COVID-19 spread among employees in German
meat industry facilities in 2020 (56). However, it is unclear
whether recommendations by government agencies and
regulators can be readily implemented to control COVID-19
in food production facilities and operations. For example,
facilities may be unable to implement certain strategies due
to their cost and/or effects on production or the production
environment (e.g., ventilation). Current information about
the adoption of mitigation strategies in the U.S. food
industry remains scarce and limited to certain sectors,
such as the meat and poultry (76) and dairy (78) sectors.
Although these studies have provided valuable information,
they were performed in the comparatively early part of
the COVID-19 pandemic (April to July 2020) when the
adoption of mitigation strategies by the U.S. food industry
would have been different (e.g., vaccine not yet available)
and information, such as guidelines to implement ventilation
in buildings (16) and OSHA's instructions to prevent
COVID-19 transmission in the workplace (72), had not yet
been published. The study by Yung et al. (78) was restricted
to dairy farmers in the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin,
which represents a small part of the U.S. dairy industry and
might not reflect the adoption of mitigation strategies in
other dairy facilities and operations in the country.
This historical information is important because an
understanding of how commonly physical distancing,
biosafety, and surveillance mitigation strategies were
adopted to prevent COVID-19 cases across the U.S.
food industry and the reasons behind such adoption or
lack of adoption are crucial for identifying areas where
prevention could be improved. The objective of this study
was to survey management professionals in the U.S. food
industry to (i) identify the needs of the U.S. food industry
(targeting produce farm operations and produce, dairy,
poultry, beef, and pork processing facilities) for mitigating
COVID-19 in food industry facilities and operations and (ii)
determine what COVID-19 mitigation strategies have been
implemented in the work environment. These objectives
were addressed by administering a needs assessment survey
between January and April 2021as detailed in the " Materials
and Methods " section.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Needs assessment survey design and data collection
A two-part Web-based needs assessment survey was
developed. Part 1 included general questions about each
survey participant's overall industry sector (produce,
dairy, poultry, beef or pork, or other), and part 2 included
questions about conditions and COVID-19 mitigation
strategies in a food production facility or operation of the
participant's choice (participants who oversaw multiple
facilities and/or operations were asked to choose one).
The wording of the questions is provided in Supplemental
Material A (Supplemental Table S1). Supplemental Material B
contains a complete copy of the survey instrument, including
the introduction letter and the consent statement. The part
1 questions were about a participant's industry sector, the
main role in their organization, how COVID-19 has impacted
their industry sector, concerns about COVID-19 control,
challenges associated with maintaining production capacity,
needs for successfully mitigating COVID-19, desired features
January/February Food Protection Trends
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Food Protection Trends - January/February 2023

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