The food and drink manufacturing industry actually comprises over 30 different industries. These range from slaughterhouses, sugar refineries and grain mills to malt manufacture and whisky distilling.
These industries have seen remarkable reductions in injuries and occupational ill health over the past 20 years. However continued targeted effort is required to ensure further reductions.
Image courtesy of Greencore Group.
An ongoing Recipe for Safety initiative between the food and drink industries and HSE has resulted in the overall injury rate dropping by over 50% since 1990/91.
Even so, over a quarter of all manufacturing injuries occur in the food and drinks industries. In the ten year period April 2000 to March 2010 almost 77,000 workers in the food and drink industries suffered an injury reportable to HSE and there were 36 fatal injuries (excluding contractors). The combined injury rate for food and drink industries is among the highest of manufacturing injury rates. Indeed the overall injury rate is 1.8 times the average for manufacturing industries generally and also 1.9 times that of the construction industry. However injury rates vary considerably between the different food and drink industries.
The main causes of injury continue to be:
Of these, the main causes of fatal injury continue to be workplace transport (including FLTs), falls from height and machinery.
The main causes of occupational ill health are:
