Distancing Line Employees In Nut Processing Facility Due to COVID-19

Cal OSHA wants a written plan or how to protect those employees. Roger Isom is president and CEO of the Western Agricultural Processors Association Based in Fresno.

“We're working through that process right now,” said Isom. “We were already following the OSHA guidance trying to help members. Because I don't know that a written plan is necessary, but certainly they've got to do things like checking your employees before they start work,” noted Isom. “Do they have a temperature? Are they experiencing the symptoms of COVID-19? Because you don't want them to work. You want to tell them to go home, until it has passed.”

Isom explained that you want to implement measures within your operation to protect against the spread of the virus. “You want to make sure that they're separated by at least six feet and for nut processors where that becomes an issue or concern is you're sorting lines,” he said.

“You've got people working right next to each other, right across from each other. You know, historically they wear smocks, hair nets, but they're not wearing masks.

So they've got to implement keeping the mask on and you need to separate them, which can be a challenge.

“If you do it without putting any kind of dividers or protection in, you basically got to alternate them. You can't have them working across from each other. You can't have them next to each other. And so at least a couple of facilities have actually slowed their sorting line down basically to half the speed,” he noted.

Isom said the problem with all this is you've got to have to run an entire additional shift to get the work done.