Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXXXIX): "Meatpacking" in California's central valley

The Los Angeles Times reported today out of Livingston, California, population 13,058, about a coronavirus outbreak in a Foster Farms poultry processing plant in this small city in the Sierra Nevada foothills.  The headline for the story by Jie Jenny Zou, Andrea Castillo, and Erin B. Logan is "Meatpacking was already a dangerous job for California workers. The pandemic made it worse." 
Livingston is in Merced County, population 255,793, where the county seat is Merced, home of the University of California, Merced, the UC system's newest campus. 

I've posted often during the last six months about the meatpacking industry as a hotspot, but most of those stories were out of the Midwest or the South.  Here's an excerpt from this story out of central California which, like many others across the nation, features immigrant workers:

Since April, more than 53,000 food workers nationwide have tested positive for COVID-19 and over 200 have died, most of them in the meatpacking industry. In Los Angeles County, food processing accounts for the second highest number of infections by workplace, following nursing homes. 

Despite the escalating stakes, an examination by The Times found vast inconsistencies in workplace reporting. 

Some businesses have been slow to report cases to local officials or test employees. Others with well-publicized outbreaks haven’t filed reports of sick or dead workers to California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA.

Understaffed and overwhelmed, the agency has struggled to manage the crisis with little direction from its federal counterpart, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration — which has been accused by worker advocates of abandoning its role to ensure safe workplaces. 

On Wednesday, the Foster Farms factory ...was shut down for deep cleaning after Merced County health officials learned that eight of its employees had died after contracting the virus and another 358 had tested positive. 

A Times review of Cal/OSHA data obtained through public records laws shows Foster Farms reported just one COVID-19 death from Jan. 1 through Aug. 13, the most recent data available. A corporate memo dated Aug. 24 said nine employees had died companywide.