COLUMBUS, Ohio – While dairy facilities have made progress in dealing with the impacts of COVID-19, some issues still remain, according to representatives of three dairy-related companies.

The panel was a part of the virtual Multi-State Dairy Quality Conference. The Nov. 12 event was hosted by officials from Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Kentucky.

The companies – Superior Dairy in Canton, Ohio; the General Mills Yoplait yogurt plant in Reed City, Mich.; and Prairie Farms Dairy, based in Edwardsville, Ill. – followed guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) early on, the representatives said.

It wasn’t – and isn’t – always easy to get workers to understand the need to follow CDC guidelines, said Greg Soehnlen, Superior Dairy’s president and CEO.

“I still think we’re dealing with some of those same issues,” he explained. “The number one issue was, because the pandemic hit so fast in a way, and there was a lot of information floating around, and our employees, everybody had their own opinion of the pandemic. We followed CDC guidelines very strictly. We had to mandate, whether it be face masks or social distancing. We had to police that very strongly. I think those were probably the toughest challenges. We spent quite a bit of time really not asking opinions but really being very autocratic as far as ‘this is what the CDC requires.’”

At the beginning of the pandemic, two immediate issues for General Mills officials were finding face masks and temperature monitoring equipment for the plants, said Sheila Rodriguez, food safety and quality manager for the Yoplait facility.

“When (people) were told, wear a mask, everybody went out and bought a ton of masks, which really made it hard for us to secure stocks of masks that we normally would not have had in a manufacturing environment,” she noted. General Mills put together a task force to help solve problems caused by the pandemic. For example, Rodriguez said the company had a hard time at first finding touchless ways to check employee temperatures at the plant. Their procedures have evolved and they are now using self-monitoring infrared scanning as employees enter the workplace.

Kevin Olson, of Prairie Farms, said the company put together teams on the plant and raw milk sides. Officials wanted to be sure all the production facilities stayed up and running, he said. On the farm side, the company began immediate communications with all its field representatives to make sure there were no active cases of COVID-19 on the farms. “Our main fear from the farm side was that there are so may conduits from one farm to the next – the haulers, vets, nutritionists – and we felt if we had open communications from the farm to us we could help manage the problems when they did occur.”

Another issue for the companies is making sure employees and those they come in contact with understand the impact their actions have on the plants, the representatives said.

Prairie Farms has had a good team effort on the producer side, Olson said. Unfortunately, he added, that does not include everyone. “We have had some who have been hesitant to disclose their information to us, not seeing or understanding the potential dangers of the farm and the hauler being a conduit to a greater population of employees. Probably the biggest hurdle has been getting the information out and them understanding it.”

At Superior Dairy, officials monitored their workforce but eventually heard about spouses or family members who had potentially tested positive, Soehnlen stated. Despite family testing positive, the employees still wanted to come to work, he said. “So we had to really reach out and really put in a second line of defense out to families. If someone did feel they came in contact (with someone) or had symptoms of COVID, we started managing symptoms predominantly because we heard that some of the tests were not very reliable. People who tested positive one day tested negative the next. We were really struggling with that.”

Employees who have symptoms are asked to quarantine for two days. If their symptoms subside and they test negative, they are allowed to return.

The General Mills facilities have developed contingency plans dealing with the temporary loss of workers due to COVID-related issues, Rodriguez said.

“We control what happens within the four walls of the manufacturing facility and we have guidelines for social distancing, we’ve done a lot to make sure we maintain 6 feet of distance,” she explained. “Unfortunately, we do not control what happens outside the four walls of our facility and we do not have any say in state guidelines or regulations.