Safety improvements on the farm have been moving at a slower pace then other industries, but it’s time for that to change, said a safety professional.
Eldeen Pozniak, a featured speaker at the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association conference in Saskatoon earlier this month, stressed the importance of taking the time to be safe.
“I think in all of Canada, safety in the workplace, there’s a shift that needs to happen but in some industries such as agriculture they’re kind of lagging behind maybe what some of the manufacturing or some of the other industries are,” Pozniak said. “We need to take time as a company, as a family, a society, as an industry, to take that step back and say can we be doing something.…”
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“Safety associations as suppliers of the farming industry, we need to communicate those hazards and risks and get that cultural change to occur within them.”
She said work has often been done in certain ways in the farming environment for years, even if it wasn’t safe. Pozniak said people’s definition of what is the right way has to change.
“If we don’t see it as a problem, if we don’t see it as a hazard, we often won’t do anything about it. Or if there is that fundamental cultural belief that it’ll never happen to us, it only happens to the farm next door or down the way, then that’s our definition,” Pozniak said.
The safety message has to hit close to home, she said.
“(Safety) has to appeal to their head, it has to appeal to their heart and it has to be easily acted upon.”
It is best delivered when related in some way to a person’s own life.
“And when we start sharing the stories about yeah, it’s happened here, it’s happened there. What was the difference between that farm situation to our farm situation?” Pozniak said.
In 2005, the Criminal Code of Canada changed to include a safety component, sections 217 and 219. It says that if anybody has reckless wanton or reckless disregard for human life, they can be found criminally negligent in a criminal court of law. This means that if an accident happens that could have been prevented, the owner of a farm can be charged because they should have known better and did nothing to try and prevent the accident from happening.
Pozniak said while farmers can’t make their farm 100 percent hazard free, they must identify them and put in place practices to control risks.
“If you know that there’s a chance of (an accident) happening but you don’t do anything, that can show reckless disregard for human life.”
