Be prepared | Occupational health and safety regulations are a farm operator’s responsibility
Producers need to develop their own health and safety guidelines or the government will do it for them.
“Be prepared in the event there are new regulations,” Canadian Agricultural Safety Association executive director Glen Blahey said in an interview during the association’s recent annual meeting.
“If there are new regulations, then you’ve done your homework.”
Health and safety regulations are legally required in workplaces in Canada, but the basic tenets of occupational health and safety are a farm operator’s responsibility.
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“People who live and work on farms are not different than people who work in factories,” he said.
“If farmers adopt this, they are demonstrating their due diligence and their acceptance and ownership of safety and health.”
Blahey said CASA’s Canada FarmSafe Plan guide was created to help farmers be proactive and establish a safe workplace based on the best industry practices needed to protect the farmer, his family and workers from injury and illness.
“It takes safety from being a dirty little secret to becoming part of the operation of a farm,” he said.
The Canadian Agricultural Injury Reporting program found that a farm’s average loss is $700 when a farmer is injured. It increases to $10,000 if the farmer is hospitalized, $143,000 if there is a permanent disability and $250,000 for a fatality.
The total cost to the Canadian economy from agricultural injuries is estimated at $200 to $300 million annually.
“The investments that you make in making a health and safety plan become an insurance hedge against those losses,” said Blahey.
The farmer has to commit to carrying out the plan and be responsible for everyone’s safety in the operation. Workers can help identify hazards and develop standardized operating practices.
“It gives workers the opportunity to provide input to the management of hazards and dangers that the operator doesn’t recognize,” Blahey said.
“The best safe work procedures are written down by a team.”
Blahey said the document can be used as a training tool for new workers and updated as required.
“The more it’s used, the better and more successful a safety plan will be in the operation,” he said. “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”
CASA hopes to promote the FarmSafe plan through farm groups.
Keystone Agricultural Producers president Doug Chorney is supportive.
“Too many farmers are dying,” he said, citing the death of a neighbour near East Selkirk, Man., last year in an all-terrain vehicle accident.
“You hug the widow of a dead farmer and you put farm safety in perspective because we are losing way too many farmers to farm accidents.”
He said a 2010 study in Manitoba found that more than half the fatalites in workplaces occurred on farms.
“We are more dangerous than any other occupation in the province,” said Chorney.
“So we have to start taking responsibility for farm safety and be proactive because if we don’t do it ourselves, government will.”
