7 Common Safety Mistakes In Food Plants

Last spring, Ken Wengert, then Director of Safety and Environmental at Kraft and current Director at Large of the American Society of Safety Engineers, told Business Insurance magazine: “We have had improved safety performance year over year for the past 20 years, but our rate of improvement has improved dramatically over the past five,” largely due to process improvements and better technology.

But the food industry still has a ways to go. In 2014, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the incidence rate of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses in food manufacturing was 5.1 per 100 full-time workers, which was higher than for manufacturing as a whole (4.0) and for all industries combined (3.4). With roughly 1.5 million people employed in food manufacturing, that works out to about 76,500 injuries.

Fortunately, as Wengert pointed out, process improvements and better technologies can help food manufacturers improve their safety records.

Here are seven common safety mistakes in food plants — and how to avoid them.