CORONAVIRUS UPDATE 1st APRIL 2020

Updates

We will be issuing updates every Monday, Wednesday and Friday going forward.
We are very conscious of overloading you with information and feel it is much more important to issue you with the information you need.
If, however, there is important information that we are asked to issue immediately then we will do so.
We are in dialog every day with stakeholders and Scottish Government bodies to make sure that any issues that arise in our sector are passed on to the appropriate bodies. This will allow planning and solutions to be arrived at in as timely a manner as possible.
If you have any issues that you wish us to raise, then please get in touch with either Bruce or Gordon on the contact details below.

REGIONAL MEETINGS POSTPONED TILL SEPTEMBER 2020

The May regional meetings have had to be postponed due to the current Coronavirus situation.

The new dates are listed below.

These meetings are for business owners and as many staff members who may wish to attend. They will start at 7.15pm and end at 9.00pm. Those attending are asked to confirm to Bruce McCall at least three days prior to the event.
Further details will follow of the presentations on these evenings.

The Regional judging of the Beef Sausage & Black Pudding Championships will take place.

Monday 14th September
Carfraemill Hotel, Scottish Borders
– South East Scotland Region

Tuesday 15th September
Glynhill Hotel, Renfrew
– West of Scotland Region
– South West of Scotland Region

Wednesday 16th September
Laichmoray Hotel, Elgin
– North of Scotland Region

Thursday 17th September
Dewars Centre, Perth
– East of Scotland Region

Announcement of awards winners

The recent Beef burger, Specialty Burger and Speciality Sausage evaluations were held at Forth Valley College on 13th March. The award winners were due to be announced at the regional meetings in May.
We will announce the Gold and Silver award winners via press releases in the local areas and on our social media channels on Monday 18th May. There will be no prior announcement of these awards!
The diamond awards were due to be judged after mystery shopping. As you will appreciate this is not an option currently.
We will carry this out as soon as the situation allows and will announce the diamond award winners as soon as possible afterwards.

Social Distancing guidelines.

Best practice and tips from industry on how to maintain social distancing measures in the workplace
This is not official guidance but is proving useful for many businesses we're told. We will continue to develop and expand these tips as we learn more.

*This is not official guidance*

Best practice and tips from industry on how to maintain social distancing measures in the workplace.

The First Minister has advised essential businesses to maintain social distancing measures in the workplace. To support food and drink manufactures in protecting their workforce from Covid- 19, Scotland Food & Drink, along with partners and member businesses, has pulled together best practice tips being used by members of the food and drink business community.

We understand that this advice may not be relevant for all businesses, but we hope that sharing community practice provides support in some way. We will continue to develop and expand these tips as we learn more and will share any official guidance as and when we receive it.

If you have created your own guidelines or have come across any helpful resources please share by sending to [email protected]

1) Social distancing measures to help staff maintain a 2-meter distance from each other

• Build extra space into the production processes themselves to maintain adequate distance between employees
• Try to eliminate queues entering and leaving the building at start and stop times. Example: use the security entrance doors at key shift start and stop times (instead of a turnstile) – supervise to maintain distance or stagger shift start time and finish times
• Keep workers on same production lines or working in the same areas of factory each day
• For multi-site operations, restrict any cross-site visits to only business critical
• Release employees at end of shift line by line to keep numbers down in change areas and at exits
• Implement home working for as many office staff as possible
• Use teleconference for meetings with people, even in the same building
• Stagger break times to be more frequent and in smaller numbers to maintain social distancing in canteens
• Increase physical space between employees at the worksite by rearranging workspaces if possible, spacing out chairs in cafeteria and meeting rooms
• Encourage staff to bring in their own food
• Increase the availability of additional locations for people eating food on site
• Increase smoking shelter areas to keep more distance between employees
• Stop all visitors at sites except those business critical

Communication

• Implement a COVID-19 Response Team that have a daily call to discuss new guidelines and challenges the business is facing
• Daily communication with all employees communicating any new guidelines, recommunication of key guidelines and any new processes/measures being implemented
• Regular reminders to workers on how to take extra precautions and prevent the spread of the virus (stay at home if sick, handwashing etc.)

2) Personal Protective Equipment

• Increase use of PPE, where possible

3) Review and revise cleaning schedules

• Increase cleaning schedules at all sites. If possible, all public areas cleaned down every two hours
• Space shifts out to fully clean workplace before new shift team arrives
• Issue office employees with anti-bacterial wipes to clean down laptops, printers, mouse, keyboards, desks etc.
• Sanitize workstations more often and extra disinfection of production lines
• Place anti-bacterial wipes at all bio metric clocks for employees to use
• Clean communal office phones thoroughly after every use
• Increase hand-washing breaks

4) Car sharing

• If you currently transport staff by private bus then ensure employees maintain a reasonable distance, wash hands before boarding and wash down bus after each use.
• Avoid if possible, car share with as few people as possible
• Do not car share with someone who is exhibiting symptoms, tell them to go home
• If you are the driver, disinfect all door handles and areas inside the car that a passenger may touch before picking them up
• Everyone should wash hands before getting in the car

5) Bigger decisions

• Change product formats so less processing and less workers on the line
• Downsizing operations to critical work only
• Scale down numbers of workers on a shift. Reducing productivity is better than closing the factory
• Cross-train employees to perform essential functions so the workplace can operate, even if key employees are absent
• Moving to a two-shift pattern could double the space available for staff but will obviously have impacts on efficiency

Official guidance can be found here:-

—>Official Guidance Link

The Scottish Craft Butchers office in Perth is now closed following government guidelines.
We will be available to our members to answer any queries via email or by mobile phone and will be available out of office hours for any members wanting to contact us.
Our contact details are below
Gordon King: – [email protected] 07917524313
Bruce McCall: [email protected] 07834490922