Sheldon Wiebe didn’t see the accident that turned him into a farm safety crusader.
But that small mercy wasn’t shared by one of his farm workers, who witnessed his own seven-year-old daughter’s arm getting caught and crushed in a potato conveyer belt.
“He had to stand right there beside her. It was traumatic,” said Wiebe, who shared the story during a recent farm safety promotion at MacDon Industries in Winnipeg.
“It was tough on the farm for months afterwards.”
Farm safety is a common topic at farm meetings but Wiebe and other safety experts say the constant dangers of everyday farm life are the greatest danger, rather than ignorance.
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“You get so used to things that you lose that edge,” said Wiebe.
Still, all farms and farmers need to ensure their standards and procedures are designed to protect people on the farm first, because it’s easier for people to refresh their knowledge than learn from scratch.
Marcel Hacault, executive director of the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association, said in every activity, farmers need to think out everything that could go wrong.
“If you’re not planning on preventing farm injuries, you’re planning on having them,” he said.
