Christina Cardinale

Candidate for New York state Assembly Christina Cardinale is voicing her concerns regarding the work force and conditions at Fieldbrook Foods in Dunkirk with regard to the recent COVID-19 outbreak.

Cardinale, a Democrat who is challenging longtime incumbent Andrew Goodell, has been one of the more outspoken politicians and candidates in regard to the rising cases at the north county food processor. She said a number of workers have reached to her to discuss their frustrations and fears.

“They are all afraid to go to work,” she said on Tuesday. “They’re expressing their hesitation in showing up.”

Some of those, according to Cardinale, said they would like to see the county Health Department take even more drastic action to stem the increasing number of cases. One of the suggestions, she said, was to “shut them down for the necessary two weeks for quarantine, for isolation.”

That happening, however, appears unlikely. During a press conference in Mayville last week, county Health Director Christine Schuyler and County Executive PJ Wendel appeared to be on the same page to allow the plant to continue to operate.

“Every 24 hours, they do a deep clean,” Schuyler said during the briefing. “It did not seem to make any sense to close them down to have them do a deep clean since they’re doing that every 24 hours.”

That has not eased the fears of some of those on the inside, who have stated they did not learn about the outbreak until it was first reported by these newspapers online during the weekend of Aug. 22 — one day after county officials learned of nine positive tests connected to the plant. Cardinale said the public, and those impacted, are deserving of quicker answers.

“I am disappointed in the overall lack of transparency that we have seen from the county executive and the director of the Health Department who is Christine Schuyler,” Cardinale said. “Any criticism that I have is not directed toward the nurses on staff. They’re all wonderful people and they’re doing their best.”

Monday’s report from the county Health Department, however, was the most detailed to date during the pandemic.

Along with the 36 new cases annouced by gender and age, there was also more details concerning the plant “cluster.”

According to the Monday numbers, 12 cases were connected to the ice cream plant and three others were positive tests from the site on Brigham Road in Dunkirk. Cardinale did applaud epidemeologist for that work, but remained critical overall.

“I don’t think they’ve done their due diligence in trying to inform the public of where outbreaks are occurring in real time,” she said.

In both The Post-Journal and OBSERVER on Tuesday, Wendel defended the delay in letting the public know of the outbreak at the plant until Aug. 24. “There was no decision by Chautauqua County government to say we deliberately waited or wished the situation at Fieldbrook Foods would go away,” he wrote. “To the contrary, on Thursday, Aug. 20, we were informed that there was a potential uptick in possible cases at Fieldbrook Foods. We contacted Fieldbrook Foods local HR director, officials at its parent corporation, Wells Inc., and officials of the New York State Department of Health to establish proactive wide-scale testing for its employees at the Dunkirk facility.”

His challenger for county executive, Richard Morrisroe, believes otherwise. “We deserved to know what happened at the Fieldbrook Farms plant within days, not weeks,” Morrisroe said. “The secrecy and inaction of county officials and plant management endangered lives and threatens school reopening. Their ongoing incompetence is a threat to our long-term economic recovery. I call on PJ Wendel to provide free, rapid testing for every public school student and employee before school starts. We cannot afford to play fast and loose with this virus.”

For her part, Cardinale said more needs to be done to address the illness with Fieldbrook staff. “I can tell there is a lot of unrest and there’s a lot of scared people,” she said. “A lot of the employees have commented on people crying at work or being upset in general.

“I want to see something done to protect these people and protect these workers.”