Food supplier fined after neglecting worker safety

Date:

3 October 2012

Release No:

LSE/179/12

A national fruit and vegetable wholesaler has been sentenced for safety failings after a worker lost the tip of her finger at a processing plant in Hayes.

TCK Fresh Produce Ltd, of Amersham, Buckinghamshire, was today (3 October) prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as a result of the incident at its premises on Printing House Lane on 30 October 2010.

Westminster Magistrates' Court heard that a 46 year-old worker from Hounslow, who does not want to be named, was using a vegetable slicing machine when it became blocked.

She pressed a stop button and opened a side panel to gain access to a conveyor that took vegetables to the cutting head. As she reached in to clear the blockage, the still-rotating cutting blade caught her right index finger and sliced off the tip to the base of her nail.

The worker's finger is permanently disfigured, although she has since returned to work.

The court was told HSE served an immediate prohibition notice on the firm preventing use of the slicer until effective guarding was installed.

Magistrates heard that HSE had served numerous notices on TCK Fresh Produce along with several written advice letters and verbal guidance. Five prohibition notices for poor machine guarding were served in 2003, 2006 and 2007. The notice served after the 2010 incident was the sixth.

TCK Fresh Produce Ltd of Anglo House, Bell Lane Office Village, Amersham, was fined a total of £6,000 and ordered to pay £7,500 in costs after pleading guilty to two breaches of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.

After the hearing, HSE inspector Jane Wolfenden said:

"TCK Fresh Produce was well aware of the need to prevent access to dangerous parts of machinery but chose to disregard previous advice and enforcement notices from HSE.

"Their failure to put an effective system in place to ensure machines had suitable protection devices and to give the workforce sufficient training put their workers at unnecessary risk. It was almost inevitable that injury would result.

"I hope that this prosecution results in the firm taking their responsibilities far more seriously in future."

For information on safe working in food industry go to www.hse.gov.uk/food

Notes to editors

1. The Health and Safety Executive is Britain's national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice; promoting training; new or revised regulations and codes of practice; and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement. www.hse.gov.uk
2. Regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 states: "Every employer shall ensure that measures are taken... to prevent access to any dangerous part of machinery or to any rotating stock-bar; or to stop the movement of any dangerous part of machinery or rotating stock-bar before any part of a person enters a danger zone.
3. Regulation 11(3) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Rgulations 1998 states: "All guards and protection devices shall
   1. be suitable for the purpose for which they are provided;
   2. be of good construction, sound material and adequate strength;
   3. be maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair;
   4. not give rise to any increased risk to health or safety;
   5. not be easily bypassed or disabled;
   6. be situated at sufficient distance from the danger zone;
   7. not unduly restrict the view of the operating cycle of the machinery, where such a view is necessary;
   8. be so constructed or adapted that they allow operations necessary to fit or replace parts and for maintenance work, restricting access so that it is allowed only to the area where the work is to be carried out and, if possible, without having to dismantle the guard or protection device.

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Issued on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive by the Regional News Network