An accident on July 16 at a Foster Farms facility in southwest Fresno, California, resulted in the death of a 53-year-old man who was an outside contractor.
The Fresno County Sheriff’s department told local news station ABC 30, that a larger refrigerator fell on the man’s head as he and others attempted to move it. Despite the efforts of paramedics, the man, a resident of Caruthers, died upon arrival at the hospital.
Foster Farms said in a statement issued to ABC 30 it is still looking into what happened. “We are fully investigating the cause of a fatal accident at our Fresno facility involving an outside contractor. The company is coordinating with local law enforcement and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) representatives. No Foster Farms employees were injured. We greatly regret the loss of life and extend our sympathies to family and friends," the company stated.
The man's sister-in-law told the news station that he was a hard-working man that went out of his way to provide for his wife and daughter.
Although the Fresno County Sheriff's department was first to respond to the incident, ABC 30 reported that as of late Wednesday night California's OSHA has taken over the investigation.
According to the WATTAgNet’s Top Poultry Companies database, Foster Farms is a family-owned vertically integrated turkey and chicken company based in Turlock, California. It was founded as a single turkey farm in 1939 and has since grown into a poultry company with operations in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana. It produces fresh, frozen and frozen ready-to-cook poultry products. It employs 11,878. Foster Farms produced 24.57 million pounds of ready-to-cook chicken on a weekly basis in 2018, an increase of 3.47 million pounds – or about 16.4 percent – from 2017. Its 2018 sales were $1.848 billion, an increase from $1.746 billion in 2017.
