Cedar Meats cluster: why abattoir workers are on the coronavirus frontline.

Extract from The Guardian

Health

As the US deals with a Covid-19 catastrophe in its meatworks, the Melbourne factory points to the potential for outbreaks in Australia

Matilda Boseley

Sat 9 May 2020 06.00 AEST

The Cedar Meats abattoir in Melbourne. The physical layout of meatworks is one reason for the intensity of outbreaks in the industry around the world. Photograph: William West/AFP via Getty Images

Working in an abattoir at the best of times is tough. The hours are long, the labour is intensive and, for rank and file labourers, the pay is low.
Now, in the Covid-19 crisis, workers have one more thing to worry about – around the world their factories have proved to be a hotbed of infection. As Australia moves to ease lockdown laws, meat workers may still be at the frontline of exposure and infection.
In the US almost 5,000 meat workers have contracted the virus, nearly 4% of the industry’s workforce, according to the Center for Disease Control. Conditions in Australia are different in many respects, with smaller factories, where distancing and disinfecting are less problematic, but the cluster of cases at Melbourne’s Cedar Meats has pointed to the potential for outbreaks.
By Friday the cluster of cases linked to Cedar Meats had grown to 71. At least 57 workers have been infected, along with 13 close contacts, including a nurse, aged care worker and high school student.

So far about 16% of the workforce at Cedar Meats has been infected and there may still be cases to come.

One reason for the intensity of outbreaks at meat processing plants is the physical layout of the factories, says Prof Benjamin Cowie, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert for the Doherty Institute.
“The workers have to be in relatively close proximity, based on the way the actual workflow occurs, it means that physical distancing is quite challenging.”
Matthew Journeaux, the secretary of the Queensland branch of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union says there are limits to the way work patterns in abattoirs can be altered.
“Basically at the abattoir animals are put on a chain which moves along and everyone has a particular job to do along the way,” he says.
“It’s not as simple as moving people apart … You have work stations and many of them have specific machinery installed there, up and down platforms and things like that.”
Many of the stations are within a metre of each other.
“There is very little automation in meat processing, each step is highly labour-intensive so this means you end up with a lot of people all in the same factory,” Journeaux says.
Even if factories were to completely refurbish production lines, a proposition Journeaux calls “impractical”, this would mean reducing meat production by as much as half.
“Conservatively Australia exports about 60% of the meat produced so we could still feed Australians … but the industry is reliant on those exports, it wouldn’t survive a cut like that.”
Shifts at meatworks are long, meaning in busy periods workers may be standing within a metre of each other for 10 to 12 hours a day. Cowie says this “unquestionably” increases the risk of infection.
“If you are standing within 1.5 metres of someone for more than 15 minutes you are considered a close contact ... The risk is really substantially greater for every extra hour you’re spending in close proximity to someone,” he says.
“Also many parts of a meatworks are kept at quite a cold temperature. Certainly, we know that the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, similar to many other respiratory viruses, is more stable in cold conditions, and that may have some role in increasing the potential for contamination or transmission.”
The production lines also involve potentially dozens of workers touching the same object, but Cowie says not enough research has been done into how the virus survives on animal flesh to know if this is a significant risk factor.

‘I just stay silent and work’

There are also cultural factors that may affect the vulnerability of meat workers.
The most recent federal profile of the meat industry, from 2012, shows about 14% of meat boners and slicers and 11% of slaughter persons were born in non-English speaking countries. The industry relies on migrant workers, who make up a substantial portion of the workforce in some plants.
“We know from many other areas that health communication messages need to be tailored to culturally and linguistically diverse communities,” Cowie says.
“That’s clearly something that we need to examine, the efficacy of the communications particularly for a range of populations, including people born overseas.”
One Cedar Meats worker told Guardian Australia that because they did not speak fluent English they felt less able to question management.
“I don’t speak English well … I just stay silent and work,” he said. “We just come to the factory and go home. Everything they tell us to do, we don’t say no.”
Journeaux says in Queensland the union has delegates who visit factories to ensure workers who speak English as a second language receive all relevant information. But since the onset of Covid-19, several plants have attempted to block union officials to entering, he says.
“They say it’s due to the Covid-19 outbreak and safety concerns. We believe that’s contrived and it’s not correct.”
The union is considering taking the matter to the federal court.
Many meat processing plants have put measures in place to reduce the chances of infection in areas that can be controlled.
“We have been working closely with factories to make sure lunchtimes are staggered so there aren’t too many people in the lunchrooms,” Journeaux says.
Guardian Australia understands Cedar Meats had instituted infection controls before their outbreak.
Workers have said surfaces such as door handles were regularly disinfected, the boning room and slaughter floor workers were encouraged not to mix or eat lunch together, and the company hired a security guard to check temperatures and send home anyone who might be sick.

Avoiding the US catastrophe

Of the 4,900 meat workers infected with Covid-19 in the US (as of 8 May) at least 20 have died, and in many states these factories are the main source of new outbreaks.
But Australia’s diversified meatpacking industry means it may not see a similar level of infections, says Assoc Prof Junsong Bian from the business school at La Trobe University.
“America has the big four meat processing firms that make up a huge percentage of the market share,” he says.
These firms control more than 80% of all beef production.
“In Australia, the top 20 firms occupy roughly half of the market share.”
The size of the US companies allows for enormous factories with thousands of workers in the same building.
“Labor costs in Australia are much higher, so it’s harder to hire so many workers on a large scale,” he says.
The US president, Donald Trump, has invoked the Defense Production Act, ordering meatpacking plants to stay open no matter the cost, even where workers have been infected.
In comparison, Cedar Meats began closing in the days after a widespread cluster was established. Once all remaining animals were killed it shut to undergo a deep clean.
A text message sent to workers who tested negative told them to self-isolate until 16 May and return to work two days later.
One worker says he is nevertheless worried about going back.
“If I had another job I wouldn’t come back … I’m still worried about the virus there, and the people I’m with, they are always saying things that scare me about it,” he says.

“But I think it’s hard to get another job, so I will stay.”