There is intense scrutiny here in Germany on why meat production factories have been one of the most common sources of coronavirus outbreaks across the country. It's an issue that's reflected Europe-wide.
Scientists believe they may have found contributing factors that led to the country's biggest single outbreak at an abattoir in North Rhine-Westphalia - cold temperatures and an insufficient air filtration system that allowed the pathogen to spread rapidly.
More than 2,000 people have contracted Covid-19 in the Gütersloh area and the vast majority are linked to the Tönnies meat processing factory. There have been 21 deaths and 738 people have since recovered, local officials say.
Professor Martin Exner, who's leading the task force studying the causes of the plant's outbreak, told reporters that the ventilation system, designed to keep temperatures between 6C and 10C "continually recycled the same untreated air into the room".
He said it was "a newly discovered risk factor, and just one factor" adding that it "would have big consequences" for other slaughterhouses as well.
The factory is one of the biggest meat producers in the country, with an annual turnover of more than €7bn (£6.3bn; $7.8bn) last year.
According to industry analysts, more than 30,000 pigs are slaughtered each day at the site, which has a workforce of 7,000 people.
Those workers are almost entirely migrant labourers from Bulgaria, Poland and Romania. They live clustered together in workers' accommodation and now they are living under strict quarantine.
Around 2,000 staff living in the nearby village of Verl are now literally fenced off from the world, with metal gates erected in front of their high-rise flats and terraced houses.
Police and security officials keep guard. No-one can leave for at least a week.
When we arrive there, many of the workers and their families are standing together behind the barrier, in the summer heat. Several of them don't speak German or English and are confused by the situation. Others are calling out to the police to allow them to leave.
"We're European as well. We have rights. You can't put us behind a fence," one Bulgarian man shouts.
I speak through the fence to Caroline, who had been pacing back and forth trying to catch the attention of police and council workers.
"I'm so upset," she says. "I've got my family at home in Bulgaria. We normally send money over to them. They are waiting for the money to come."
Red-jacketed city council workers are on hand, trying to explain the situation over megaphones, informing the workers that they will be bringing food to them for the next few days.
Local volunteers wheeled shopping trolleys packed with food for the workers - cakes and biscuits wrapped in tin foil.
The migrant workers here tend to give the same response when I ask about conditions at the factory. They tell me they are good: "There's no problem," they say on camera.
Aid workers tell us that many migrants fear that they'll be sacked if they speak out.
Among those in quarantine are other residents in the flats who don't work at the company. One man tells me that the living conditions for some are extremely crowded. "Everyone knows about the living conditions here. Sometimes there are 16 people living in one room," he says.
Nearby, I meet Inge Bultschneider, who has been trying to help improve living conditions for the migrants which she thinks also contributed to the spread.
She says she's taken part in demonstrations in the past, because of the alleged poor state of some of them. She shows me photos of one house that appears to be full of black mould.
Source: BBC
