Compensation news
24/02/2011

Accident at work for two food processor employees

A food processing company based in Wombwell, Barnsley, has been ordered to pay for breaching Health and Safety at Work Regulations which led to two separate employees suffering an accident at work.

The HSE said that the two accidents, which happened within four months of one another, "could and should have been avoided".

The first incident, described as "horrific" by the HSE, occurred in December 2009 when a 32-year-old man working with an industrial meat tenderiser got his left hand caught in the machine's rotating knives.

By putting a metallic object across the system's magnetic sensor, the machine's guard was easily overridden by workers who wished to place meat into the machine more easily, but this put their safety at risk.

The man's hand was caught on such an occasion and engineers were only able to free it by dismantling the machine. The victim had to have his hand amputated as a result of the work injury.

In March 2010 another worker at the same factory had the ends of the fingers on his right hand severed as he was feeding plastic sheets into a machine used for sealing food into packaging. Again, the HSE found that there was inadequate protection against the dangerous parts of the machine.

The company pleaded guilty to the two separate breaches of regulations and was ordered to pay fines of £22,000 in total. Now that the firm has admitted liability, the two injured workers could decide to make accident at work compensation claims for their pain, suffering and loss of earnings.