OSHA has announced a significant expansion of its inspection practices for the Animal Slaughtering and Processing industry. This change comes as a result of the industry’s higher-than-average days away, restricted, or transfer (DART) rate, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.
Under the new directive, essentially all inspections in the industry—whether programmed or unprogrammed—will now be wall-to-wall, comprehensive inspections, with an emphasis on the following hazards:
- Sanitation and Cleanup Operations
- Ergonomics/Musculoskeletal Disorders
- Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and employer payment obligations
- Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout)
- Machine Guarding
- Slips, Trips, and Falls
- Process Safety Management
- Chemical Hazards (e.g., ammonia, chlorine, hydrogen peroxide, peracetic acid, carbon dioxide, liquid and gaseous nitrogen)
- Occupational Noise
- Egress and Blocked Exits
- Recordkeeping
For those employers in the implicated industry, it is imperative that do a thorough safety review for all areas identified above, adopt an OSHA inspection protocol, and prepare for the inevitable OSHA inspection.
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