Rapid review of government issued documents relevant to mitigation of COVID-19 in the US food manufacturing and processing industry

We surveyed publicly available records published by the United States (US) government between the start of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and September 30th, 2021, to identify documents containing resources or guidelines about COVID-19 mitigation relevant to the US food manufacturing and processing industry (hereafter referred to as “the food processing industry”). Among 36 documents identified and reviewed (including 35 from government agencies and one from a relevant professional association), we extracted 19 categories of mitigation strategies covering the themes of employee biosafety, surveillance, vaccination, social distancing, and worker education. We concluded that the priority of COVID-19 mitigation in the food processing industry was to protect the health and safety of industry workers while maintaining food supply chain resilience to minimize disturbance in the food market and avoid food crisis. A collated list of the identified documents and their comprehensive review will (i) aid researchers and public health workers in interpreting the potential impacts of the recommended mitigations on the epidemiology of the disease among workers in the food processing industry and (ii) help the food processing industry sort out the most essential strategies to take in face of a pandemic. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement This study was funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) award #2020-68006-32875 to R.I. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable. Yes All data referred to in the present study are contained in the manuscript; and the excel spreadsheets referred to in the present study are available online at