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Late last month, Oregon Governor Kate Brown extended an Executive Order she says will protect farm workers from coronavirus. Executive Order 20-58, issued back in April, focuses not only on physical distance, but sanitation and isolation requirements. But Samantha Bayer with the Oregon Farm Bureau says these rules handed down by the Governor hurt both producers and farm workers.

“Certain aspects of the rules for farmers are fairly arbitrary and actually put farmers at risk of contracting COVID-19.  And from a risk standpoint, the rules have no caveat for if there was actually an outbreak on a farms.”

In addition to making day-to-day operations more challenging this season, Bayer said the Executive Order made it so jobs either could not be filled, or had to be eliminated, meaning commodities were not harvested. She added OFB was not part of the conversations that led to these far reaching rules.

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“The Farm Bureau had no role in this Executive Order and were actually shutout of any conversation about how best to protect farm workers moving forward.  We got notice of the executive order less than 24 hours before it was released and we were not given the opportunity to review the text prior to it being finalized and published.”

Bayer added most farmers are extremely concerned about the health, safety and well being of their workers, and while the OFB does not opposed the intent of the Executive Order, being excluded from conversations was extremely difficult. Bayer added the Farm Bureau has reached out to Brown’s office to initiate conversations about Executive Order 20-58, but has yet to hear a response.




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