Musculoskeletal disorders are often the result of multiple contributing factors — anything from work station posture, gender, and temperature to work pace, low staffing levels, and lighting — making it difficult to pinpoint and change the root cause in your food processing plant operation.

When employees are exposed to multiple contributing factors, the chances of injury (and costs to the business) increase. It’s essential, then, to identify the contributing factors that are at play in your processing facility and take the steps to correct and eliminate them.  Doing so will decrease the risk of injury to your employees, and make your food processing plant safer.

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Forceful exertion is a common cause of employee injury in food processing plants. Lifting product, pushing carts, dumping product into vats or cooking pots, transferring product from a conveyor to work station — all tasks commonly performed in a food processing plant — can result in back injuries or other types of musculoskeletal disorders.

Simply defined, force is the amount of muscular effort expended to perform work. It can range from small (the amount of force to push a button) to great (like repeatedly lifting and stacking product) and includes everything in between.

The amount of force used in a specific task directly affects the level of risk of employee injury. Exerting great amounts of force over a long period of time can result in fatigue and physical damage to the body. Even single exertions of force, whether small or great, can lead to damage if not performed properly.

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There is a high risk for work related injuries in the food processing industry. Reaching across a conveyor, lifting heavy loads, twisting and bending at a work station, performing repetitive tasks, working in awkward positions, operating dangerous equipment – all tasks commonly found in processing plants – are leading risk factors for injury.

According to the California Department of Labor Statistics and Research, the food processing industry has one of the highest lost-workday incidence (LWDI) rates. In 2000, it was almost double than the LWDI rate for all industries as a whole.¹

Bruises, cuts, burns, fractures, and amputations are among the top causes of such a high lost-workday incidence rate — due in part to the equipment used in food processing plants.

While those injuries are severe, and drive up the LWDI rate, there is a much more common set of injuries that account for the majority of the high LWDI rate: musculoskeletal disorders.

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According to the California Department of Labor Statistics and Research, workers in food-processing plants have a higher likelihood of being hurt on the job than workers in many other industries.¹ Reaching across a conveyor, lifting heavy loads, twisting and bending at a work station, performing repetitive tasks, and working in awkward positions – all tasks commonly found in processing plants – are leading risk factors for injury.

Every injury comes at a cost — both to the employee injured and to the company — in way of accident investigations, OSHA logs, employee downtime, employee turnover, employee retraining, insurance premium increases, medical services, and hiring temporary replacement workers.

Understanding the causes of the most common injuries in food processing plants is key to making adjustments, investing in ergonomic equipment, and providing employee training in order to avoid the high cost of employee injuries.

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