Categories: News

Study: Food jobs are the pandemic’s deadliest work

Which workers are at the greatest risk of dying from Covid-19? Cooks, farm workers, bakers, and other essential food workers, according to a new University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) study. While all Californians between 18 and 65 years old experienced a 22 percent increase in deaths during the pandemic, food and agriculture laborers had a 39 percent increase, far ahead of those in working in other high-risk fields like transportation and manufacturing. Because of these laborers’ high risk, the study authors suggest those employees get moved up in line for vaccinations. “While we pay a lot of lip service to essential workers, when you see the actual occupations that rise to the top of the list as being at much more risk and associated with death, it screams out to you who’s really at risk,” a UCSF epidemiologist told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Related Post
The Counter
Share
Published by
The Counter

Recent Posts

Grist acquires The Counter and launches food and agriculture vertical

Grist, an award-winning, nonprofit media organization dedicated to highlighting climate solutions and uncovering environmental injustices,…

7 months ago

Is California giving its methane digesters too much credit?

Every year, California dairy farms emit hundreds of thousands of tons of the potent greenhouse…

3 years ago

Your car is killing coho salmon

Highway 7 runs north-south through western Washington, carving its way through a landscape sparsely dotted…

3 years ago

The pandemic has transformed America’s dining landscape into an oligopoly dominated by chains 

One of the greatest pleasures I had as a child growing up in the Chicago…

3 years ago

California is moving toward food assistance for all populations—including undocumented immigrants

Undocumented immigrants experience food insecurity at much higher rates than other populations, yet they are…

3 years ago

Babka, borscht … and pumpkin spice? Two writers talk about Jewish identity through contemporary cookbooks.

Writer Charlotte Druckman and editor Rebecca Flint Marx are both Jewish journalists living in New…

3 years ago