In 2020, California’s Foster Farms became the site of one of the nation’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks at a meat or poultry plant. The California Report’s Central Valley reporter, Alex Hall, spent a year and a half talking to spouses and family members of workers who spent decades at the company’s chicken-processing plants. She found that hundreds of Foster Farms workers tested positive for the virus in 2020. Sixteen people died, and at least 20 others were hospitalized.
Hall’s investigation shows that as plants stayed open to maintain the food supply, and workers got sick from COVID-19, or even died, Foster Farms didn’t always give a complete picture of the problem to health officials, state regulators and their own employees. We meet families who lost loved ones who worked at Foster Farms — families who are grieving, struggling financially, and trying to make sense of what happened.
Since this episode originally aired in October 2021, some of the families Hall spoke with are still waiting to hear whether they will receive death benefits — nearly a year and a half after their loved ones died. Meanwhile, three of the temp agencies Foster Farms used to hire workers have successfully argued to get their Cal/OSHA penalties reduced. Foster Farms is still appealing the state’s citations against them.