Safety warning issued as firm pays £50,000

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) underlined firms’ legal duties after processor East End Foods was fined £25,000, with £28,000 costs, for failing to reasonably care for an injured employee.

Employee Rajvir Singh was injured in 2006 when a 50kg sack of basmati rice fell on his neck. An investigation into the accident revealed that large consignments of 50kg sacks of basmati rice were routinely being manually offloaded from containers without mechanical aids.

Employees were also accessing and retrieving containers and initial sacks of rice by being raised and lowered on a pallet placed on the forks of a forklift truck. East End Foods had not conducted a suitable and sufficient risk assessment for this activity, nor taken appropriate steps to reduce the risk to the lowest reasonably practicable level, said the HSE.

The HSE had already issued an Improvement Notice in December 2002 on the West Bromwich-based company for not conducting a suitable and sufficient risk assessment for manually unloading 45kg sacks. East End Foods failed to heed advice given by both the HSE in 2002 and the company’s own health and safety consultant in 2005, according to the HSE.

Speaking after the case, HSE’s inspector Judith Lloyd said: “It is important that employers are aware of their legal duties to take reasonable care of the health and safety of employees. In the food and drink industry, 30% of all acute injuries result from bad practice in manual handling.

“Stacking and de-stacking sacks, boxes and crates are among the top five causes of manual handling injuries in the food and drink industry. Studies have shown that three quarters of these injuries are preventable. That’s why the HSE is vigilant in ensuring employers follow the rules and regulations set out for their industry.”