The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have reminded employers of their legal duties relating to manual handling after an employee was injured when a 50kg sack of rice fell on his neck.
East End Foods plc pleaded guilty to failing to take reasonable care for the health and safety of employees under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The company was fined £25,000 with £28,000 costs.
Wolverhampton Crown Court heard that large consignments of 50kg sacks of basmati rice were routinely being manually offloaded from containers without the use of any mechanical aids. Further, employees were being raised and lowered on a pallet placed on the forks of a forklift truck, in order to gain access to containers and retrieve sacks of rice. Unfortunately, the company had not carried out a suitable risk assessment for this activity, nor had they taken appropriate steps to reduce the risk.
Furthermore, East End Foods had failed to heed an improvement notice in December 2002, in relation to not carrying out a suitable risk assessment for manual unloading. The company had also ignored the advice given by its own health and safety consultant in 2005.
HSE inspector, Judith Lloyd commented, "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 amongst 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."
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