The poultry packing industry has thrived off cheap labour provided by Haitians and Hispanics, but they have been the first to be hit by Covid-19
A recently recruited employee answers questions outside the Perdue Farms chicken and poultry processing factory in the US on May 2 2020 in Salibury, Maryland. Picture: AFP/ERIC BARADATina says a little prayer every time she heads to work at a Delaware poultry plant, a plea that this will not be the day that the invisible killer picking off her colleagues comes for her.
“Every day I come, I just pray to God that nothing happens,” said Tina — one of few workers who would agree to speak to a reporters, though even she declined to provide her full name for fear of reprisals. “I want to go home, I have three kids at home, a baby, but I can’t do that. I have no choice, bills are coming from left to right.”
The number of coronavirus infections has soared recently in the Delmarva Peninsula, which reaches south out of Delaware to eastern Maryland and the northeast of Virginia. “When they see people dying in New York hospitals, the lack of material and people put in dumps, they are scared, thinking they won’t receive the care they need — and end up dying,” said Nadya Julien, a Haitian nurse practitioner in Laurel, Delaware.She herself contracted the disease and was hospitalised for six days in April, a story she tells her patients to help them overcome their fears.
Faced with the threat of disruption to the nation’s food supply, Trump has ordered meat and poultry plants to remain open during the pandemic that has claimed almost 70,000 lives in the US.
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