Malkin writes about an article that writes about illegals at a chicken plant who have TB:
The number of workers exposed to tuberculosis at a Greenville, S.C., chicken plant has grown to 131, but state health officials cautioned Tuesday only one is suspected of having an active form of the infectious disease.
The article continues about how many of these workers are possibly here illegally and may have come from nations that don’t immunize against such diseases:
The greatest number of foreign born cases, 25 percent, or 1,942 cases, came from Mexico, followed by the Philippines, Vietnam, and India.
I can appreciate that the researchers are concerned about the workers and are focused on TB. But if so many of them have TB, isn’t it likely that many of them have other diseases too? TB is pretty hard to pass-in-mass, if you will (cough on someone). But isn’t it likely that diseases are being passed to the customers via the product? This is raw chicken, but in other places it is beef, others vegetables, even fruit.
If these companies are unwilling to confirm that the employees are citizens, what are the chances they are testing to ensure they don’t carry some infectious disease that could be spread via their products? (answer: none)
How big of a deal is it? I dunno. But if the number of illegals continues to increase, so does the likely-hood of an epidemic occurring because of this situation.
In addition to that, I wonder if the new “Shamnesty” bill has a clause requiring all persons get visas will get their immunizations? (If they do, I’m sure it will be free of charge, but that’s beside the point, eh?)
I don’t know if it’s a big deal, either.
Plenty of citizens go to work sick every day in the food industry. Best defense is individuals heating/cooking food thoroughly and give a good washing to raw fruits & vegetables.