Are accidents inevitable, or should more be done to protect workers in the Food Manufacturing Sector?

2 Sisters Food Group fined £230,000 after worker loses most of his hand.

It was reported last month that 2 Sisters Food Group were fined a total of £230,000 after two incidents at its Suffolk factory.

In the first incident a Night Shift Supervisor lost four fingers, part of his thumb and some of the palm of his right hand. This incident occurred when the Supervisor was assisting a member of his team to clean equipment and his hand was pulled into two rotating cogs and crushed. (A safety guard had been removed from the machine).

Just a month later, at the same site, a Fork Lift Truck driver had his arm trapped and broken. The company had fitted a bypass device to override a safety control that would have prevented this happening.

Rather surprisingly, a 2010 survey commissioned by health Insurer Aviva suggested that people working in Food Manufacturing are one-and-a-half times more likely to be injured at work than Construction workers. 

If Food Manufacturing is more dangerous than Construction and given that two serious incidents happened within weeks of each other at the same site……….

Are accidents inevitable, or should more be done to protect workers in the Food Manufacturing Sector?