The president and CEO of Highline Mushrooms in Leamington is calling on other agricultural businesses in the area to get their employees tested for COVID-19.
Aaron Hamer says a "significant" number of his Essex County staff volunteered to take the test.
He says it was a no-brainer for his company to ask the employees to get tested for their safety along with the community's safety.
Hamer says his company has worked with Erie Shores HealthCare over the last two weeks.
"They had buses continually coming to our business, picking up workers so that they could distance so very few people on each bus," he says. "They went and got tasted quickly and then the business were being sanitized and other businesses were in rotation picking up workers."
Hamer says Highline's temporary foreign workers are on two-year contracts.
"Mushrooms grow four per cent every hour," he says. "They double every 24 hours. We are continually harvesting mushrooms and missing a significant number of workers would be very devastating to our crops but none of that is prioritized over the safety or the health of our workers or our community."
Hamer feels it's important for workers in the agricultural sector to get tested.
"For us we made the call, I would call on all the other agricultural businesses in the community to step up to the plate and if the health ministers are calling for testing, if the premier is calling for testing, if our mayor is calling for testing, let's go out there and support our workers to get them tested," he says.
Hamer says Highline Mushrooms employs between 800 to 900 people in Essex County.
"We have a bit less than half of our work force in Essex County would be part of the temporary foreign worker program so it's very vital to our business as it is to all the agricultural businesses in the region," he says.
On Tuesday, Mexico's ambassador to Canada announced that his country won't send any more temporary foreign workers to Canada until it has more clarity on why two workers in Essex County died due to COVID-19.
Hamer says health and safety of his employees comes first.
"It's a sad day when Mexico looks at Canada and questions that we're not possibly doing everything for all the people that are in our country, whether they're Canadian citizens or citizens of other countries," he says. "Our brand when corporate social responsibility around the world is our flag and is the fact that we're Canadian.
Hamer says a number of safety measures have been put in place at Highline Mushrooms facilities such as the installation of plexiglass barriers, temperature checks, the installation of tents and more buses for proper physical distancing.
The dedicated testing centre in Leamington for migrant workers closed on Thursday.
The centre tested more than 750 workers since June 9.
There are about 8,000 agri-food workers in Essex County at more than 170 farms.