Maple Lodge Farms to begin vaccinating employees, pop-up clinic for community to come

Maple Lodge Farms (MLF) will be the first of three large employers who have had COVID-19 outbreaks in Peel Region to launch on-site vaccine clinics for its employees.

As part of the province’s public-private partnership pilot program, clinics will be set up at all three of the company’s Peel facilities — one in Brampton and two in Mississauga — and run for two weeks.

“Two weeks ago, the province published criteria for workplaces wishing to apply for the pilot program. Having met the criteria, we subsequently submitted an on-site vaccination plan proposal that has since met the intense scrutiny of the province and Peel Public Health, making us a successful candidate for the pilot program,” the company said in a release.

As per the program requirements, the clinic is fully funded by MLF and the company has hired a third-party healthcare provider to deliver the vaccinations and supply the volunteers to operate the clinics.

“We started advocating probably two months ago with the assistance of the Brampton Board of Trade to really try and make on-site vaccination work for essential workers happen, because we know that our essential workers are the community in Peel Region,” explained Vanessa White from Maple Lodge Farms.

The clinic at the Brampton site had “soft start” Tuesday and will be fully operational for the rest of the week. The clinic at the company’s Mississauga Distribution Centre will run Thursday and Friday this week and the Mississauga plant will run the clinic from May 5 to 7 next week.

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The company says the clinics are meant to provide easy access to vaccines for their employees but stressed that vaccination is a choice and not mandatory. They say so far, about 15 per cent of eligible employees have declined vaccination.

“We couldn’t be happier to be able to do this. This is the first time in 14 months that we’ve worked on something that feels like hope,” added White. “We are thrilled to partner with Peel Region, the province and Dynacare to make this happen. It has taken a lot of hands to make this come together … this has been an absolute labour of love and we’re pretty excited.”

In addition to the employee-only clinics, MLF says they will be sponsoring a pop-up vaccination clinic for the surrounding community — a condition stipulated by the province for companies interested in the program.

A location and time for the MLF sponsored community clinic is yet to be finalized in consultation with Peel Public Health.

Amazon and Maple Leaf Foods have also been identified for on-site immunization clinics.