'A Covid outbreak is a worry, but we're doing everything to avoid it'

Like anyone in business, local mushroom producer Gerry Reilly would plan for the future and think about what could go wrong.

But of all the potential challenges facing his family-run business, Reilly Mushrooms in Walderstown, Athlone, a hugely disruptive global pandemic is not one that ever crossed his mind.

"You would have looked at things that might go wrong with disease (of the crop), or financial problems, or markets, or workers. One thing we never ever could think of was a pandemic that would strike the world like this," he said.

"It's a new one for us, and for every business worldwide. It's something over which you have no control."

Recent weeks have seen outbreaks of Covid-19 in a number of meat plants and other food production facilities, including Walsh Mushrooms in Tipperary, which had to close after 29 of its 170 staff tested positive for the virus.

Gerry (pictured above, in 2018, with his wife Mary and son Kevin) said the possibility of an outbreak at Reilly Mushrooms was a constant worry, but the company was taking every precaution to try to ensure it doesn't happen.

"Of course you would be nervous and worried about it," he told the Westmeath Independent.

"It would be an awful thing if someone got sick on the farm, and in other farms it has happened and they have been closed down. People's health is the most important thing."

In recent years Reilly Mushrooms has employed over 50 staff, the majority of whom are from Latvia, Lithuania, or Poland. Staff numbers are slightly lower at the moment, because of a decision to reduce production by about 20% at the outset of the pandemic.

Gerry said his company has been encouraged by the Department to maintain production to the best of its ability during this crisis.

"On the first day of the lockdown, we got a phonecall from the Department of Agriculture and they said, 'it's not easy, a lot of businesses are closing down, but we are asking you as a food business to try and continue production the best you can.' We felt we had to keep going," he said.

A number of safety measures have been introduced to make the working environment as safe as possible. Everybody has their temperature checked when they arrive at the farm in the morning, and temperatures are again checked during the day.

Staff are required to wear masks, hand sanitisers are provided, and there are ongoing efforts to ensure social distancing.

"We did some simple things, like taking many of the chairs out of the canteen, and arranging it so that groups of only about six people go in there together at one time.

"Everybody wears hair nets when picking mushrooms, so we got hair nets of four or five different colours. If you are in a group of red hair nets, you're not allowed in the canteen with somebody with blue or green or black hair nets.

"One good thing is that our mushroom houses are all about 40 metres long, and 10 metres wide inside, and only about ten people would be picking in the one house at the one time. So with ten people, over 40 metres, it's easy enough for them to be stretched out.

"The big thing I said to staff at the very beginning is, 'that person over there might have (the virus) and if you don't protect yourself you might get it from them.' They have been very good in adhering to that."

Most of the staff live within walking distance of the farm in Walderstown.

A travelling shop, in the form of a large refrigerated lorry, visits to sell Eastern European food and supplies to the staff, and this means they don't need to go into Athlone town very often.

"Luckily enough, in the houses where they live they all have their own bedrooms and they're all well separated that way. Nobody's cramped.

"We also try to arrange it so that people from individual houses are working in the same mushroom house. God forbid we would have an outbreak, but if it happened we would be able to say, 'that team lives together, works together, travels together,' and so on."

Reilly Mushrooms is an award-winning company which has traded for more than three decades. It earned the top award for mushrooms in the horticulture category at the Bord Bia Origin Green Farmer Awards in December 2018.

While an outbreak of the virus would have serious implications for the business, Gerry emphasised that people's health was the biggest concern.

"One thing about mushrooms is that if you close down you lose orders, and that makes it very hard to get going again. Mushrooms are not like a field of potatoes, where you can delay picking them for a week, or two, or three.

"With mushrooms you have to pick them today, and if you're closed down you lose out on that straight away and they have to be dumped.

"But what we're more concerned about is people's health and wellbeing. You can't take any chances, you just have to do the absolute best that you can," he concluded.