The COVID-19 pandemic has created new and evolving challenges for businesses around the world. At Pacific Seafood, we are doing everything possible to ensure the health and safety of our team members, families, customers, and communities as we collectively navigate this worldwide event. Ensuring our collective safety has been, is, and will remain at the forefront of our thoughts and actions as a company.
As a national producer and distributor of fresh and frozen food products, Pacific Seafood is part of our nation’s “critical infrastructure.” That means we have a special responsibility to maintain operations and ensure that Americans continue to have access to necessary food products. We are making every effort to balance that responsibility with our similar responsibility to abide by and support continuing public health restrictions, social distancing requirements, and closure orders crucial to community resilience in the face of the pandemic.
As a food producer, many of our cleaning and disinfection protocols were already of the highest possible standards even before COVID-19. Even so, in response to this worldwide event, we formed an in-house COVID-19 Response Team to aggressively lead our safety efforts as a company in early March. That team has developed and implemented various policies over the past several months to guide our managers and locations as we respond to the evolving situation. Many of these policies have gone above and beyond recommended guidance, and we remain committed to doing everything reasonably possible to limit transmission.
Our protocols and guidance will continue to evolve as our knowledge of the virus and how it is transmitted grows. The COVID-19 Response Team is actively monitoring new guidance and will update this document as things continue to change.
Below is summary of, but not fully inclusive of, our current protocols that all workers are required to know and execute:
Team Members
- Ask all team members to be alert for symptoms of any kind
- Require team members who are sick to stay home
- Instruct team members to wash hands often and avoid touching eyes, nose, or mouth
- Require cloth face coverings in all common areas as well as additional PPE for specific job roles
Facility Access
- Screen EVERYONE before entering any facility
- Do not allow anyone to enter any facility if they have either fever or symptoms of COVID-19
- Require everyone entering any facility to adhere to all COVID-19 policies
- Limit access to Pacific Seafood team members only wherever possible
Face Coverings & Protective Equipment
- Supply face masks and/or cloth face coverings to all employees
- Require everyone to wear face masks or cloth face coverings in common areas and spaces where 6 ft separation cannot be maintained
- Require face shields for all team members in processing/production environments
- Designate supervisors to monitor and facilitate appropriate face coverings and PPE
Cleaning & Sanitation
- Regularly clean and disinfect frequently touched objects, surfaces, and common areas
- Establish cleaning and disinfection teams to conduct activities on a regular schedule
- Avoid sharing work tools and equipment wherever possible
Social Distancing
- Stagger shifts, start times, and break times where possible to reduce the number of team members in common areas
- Provide visual cues (e.g. signs, tape marks, floor markings) to ensure proper spacing of 6 ft spacing in areas where team members congregate (e.g., health screening stations, time clocks, etc.)
- Install transparent shields or other physical barriers in areas where 6 ft separation cannot be maintained
- Modify seats, furniture, workstations, etc. to maintain at least 6 ft separation wherever possible
- Use videoconferencing and/or teleconferencing and avoid “in-person” meetings where possible