Highline Mushrooms

Highline Mushrooms’ Response to COVID-19 Related Farm Closures

December 22nd, 2020 – Over the last 5 days Highline Mushrooms has been working with Fraser Health to help facilitate the testing of over 200 of our associates across four of our BC farms, in Langley and Abbotsford. We have been notified that a number of associates haves since tested positive across the four farms as a result of this testing.

Upon being notified of these potential positives, our workplace and employee contact tracing protocols were immediately put into place and each work and common space that may have been affected has undergone deep cleaning and sanitization procedures.

Our health and safety team continues to work closely with local health officials to notify and support affected employees and is undertaking a detailed contact tracing investigation. Affected Highline Mushrooms associates will remain away from the workplace until they are cleared by medical officials to return to work safely.

Based on Fraser Health’s guidelines our four farms in Abbotsford and Langley will be temporarily closing to contain any further outbreak. The safety and security of our associates is job one. We continue to work closely with Fraser Health to ensure all appropriate protocols are implemented.

Fraser Health and the Canadian Food Inspection Authority have stated that there is no evidence to suggest that food is a likely source of transmission. Similar businesses to ours have not been required to recall their products.

Highline has worked extensively over the past several months to develop and adhere to robust health and safety measures across our locations, see below for more details.

Our priority is to do everything we can to ensure the health and safety of our workforce and the communities we serve. We will provide updates as appropriate.

I am confident our response is very appropriate for the situation and prioritizes the health and well-being of our associates. As the information relating to COVID-19 changes, we will continue to monitor the situation and adjust any part of our procedures, practices, and precautions as required.

Thanks for stopping by our website to learn about what we are doing as it relates to COVID-19.

We are very busy ensuring our associates feel safe and secure at Highline, because our associates are some of Canada’s front-line heroes! They are working every day to make sure the supply of fresh, nutritious and affordable mushrooms remain available every time you go to the grocery store or order take-out from your favourite restaurant. As this global pandemic develops and changes constantly, we remain agile in our response, but never in our mission of protecting our associates’ health and well-being.

From the moment associates come to work, they see and recognize the effort we are taking to keep them safe. Upon arriving, all associates are participating in pre-screening questionnaires followed by having their temperatures taken. We are also limiting the number of associates who ride each bus into work by increasing the number of buses we are using. Once at work, we have been requiring mask usage by 100% of our associates since mid-March. In addition to the pre-screening and temperature check, we have required all associates to sign off on reminders to follow all government and local protocols on and offsite.

For those on the packing lines, we have added Plexiglas in between work stations and have increased the number of shifts we operate in order to increase distancing. Having additional shifts allows us to reduce the number of people at each lunch and break, and we have also procured heated trailers to extend our available lunch room space and erected heated tents to further reduce the number of associates at any one lunch or break table. Additionally, we have installed Plexiglas to ensure associates are properly distanced at the same table or have added plastic sheeting in between tables. I want to make sure everyone is following these protocols, therefore we have hired monitors at every farm (and on every shift) to specifically watch over lunch rooms, break rooms, and buses so that we have someone enforcing these precautions…because we know it’s easy to forget or view ourselves as invincible to the COVID-19 threat.

Where possible we have implemented work from home for those associates that are able to do so. Meetings, training and orientations have been switched to the use of virtual platforms to further our social distancing policies. The offices have been closed since March 2020 to all visitors.