Meat, poultry and fish
Injury rate comparisons
Injury incidence rates (ie injuries per 100,000 workers per year) averaged for the three years 2005/06-2007/08 are as follows:
- Slaughtering - meat: 1054
- Slaughtering - poultry: 1459
- Meat and poultry products: 1427
- Fish processing: 955
- All food and drink industry average: 1470
- All manufacturing industry average: 913
There are around 30 different food and drink manufacturing industries. View a comparison graph of all injuries.
Main causes of injury
- Being struck by hand tools including knives, especially during boning out etc
- Manual handling and lifting - especially lifting heavy and awkward loads
- Slips - mostly due to wet or greasy floors
- Machinery - such as conveyors, bandsaws, derinders, skinning machines, pie and tart machines, packaging machinery
- Transport - including fork lift trucks and vehicles at loading bays
- Falls from height - off ladders, stairs, work platforms, plant and vehicles
- Exposure to harmful substances and hot objects, eg splashes/vapour from cleaning chemicals
Main occupational ill health risks
- Musculoskeletal injury from manual handling, eg lifting boxes of product
- Work-related upper limb disorders (WRULDs) from repetitive work, eg from cutting, boning, jointing, trussing and evisceration
- Noise induced hearing loss from noisy areas, eg powered saws, blast-freezers/chillers, bowl choppers, packing machinery
- Infections from micro-organisms, eg Campylobactor in poultry processing
- Occupational asthma from aerosol proteins in fish processing
- Carcinogenic risk from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) from smoking fish and meat products
- Ill health from long term working at reduced temperatures
BMPA Health and Safety Committee
The British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) oversees an industry H&S committee which meets several times a year. The committee comprises:
- BMPA
- Major meat producers
- Agricultural Horticultural Development Board
- Food Standards Agency
- Meat Training Council
- National Federation of Meat and Food Traders
- International Meat Trades Association
- Health and Safety Executive
- Trade unions
The committee considers newly arising issues, writes guidance for the meat/slaughtering industries and communicates information to the industries. Current guidance can be found in BMPA's Health and Safety Guidance Notes for the Meat Industry [2.1MB].
Industry specific guidance
