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State Guidance for Farms to Prevent/Respond to COVID-19

New York State has released official guidance specific to farms addressing COVID-19 (Novel Coronavirus). You can find the document titled “Interim Guidance for Prevention and Response of COVID-19 at Farms” at this link: https://agriculture.ny.gov/interim-guidance-prevention-and-response-covid-19-farms.

The document covers: cleaning and disinfection, face coverings, social distancing, high-risk locations, coordination with local health departments, employee health screening, quarantine/isolation, and farm-provided employee housing.

A companion document is a helpful checklist for farms to be sure they have covered every required item: https://agriculture.ny.gov/covid-19-operator-checklist-farms.

Also included is a tip sheet intended for farm workers (https://agriculture.ny.gov/covid-19-prevention-tips-farmworkers). This document is presently in English but should be available in more languages soon, and I recommend that you distribute it to all employees. Please carefully read the last section of the document titled “Empower Yourself,” this section informs workers about how to file complaints. Make sure that your business is in full compliance with all federal and state COVID-19-related sick leave and paid family leave requirements and that you are communicating this information to employees, see this post (https://agworkforce.cals.cornell.edu/2020/04/01/covid-19-employee-leave-and-farm-employers/) for more information.

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By Richard Stup, Cornell University. Permission granted to repost, quote, and reprint with author attribution.

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