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The food and drink manufacturing industry actually comprises over 30 different industries. These range from slaughterhouses, sugar refineries and grain mills to malt manufacture and whisky distilling.
An ongoing Recipe for Safety initiative between the food and drink industries and HSE has resulted in the overall injury rate dropping by almost 50% since 1990/91.
Even so, a quarter of all manufacturing injuries still occur in the food industry. In the ten year period April 1997 to March 2007 over 94,000 workers in the food and drink industries suffered an injury reportable to HSE and there were 37 fatal injuries (excluding contractors). The combined injury rate for food and drink industries is among the highest of manufacturing injury rates. Indeed the injury rate is 1.6 times the average for manufacturing industries generally and is 1.8 times that of the construction industry. However injury rates vary considerably between the different food and drink industries.
The main causes of injury continue to be:
Of these, the main causes of fatal injury continue to be workplace transport (including FLTs), falls from height and machinery.
The main causes of occupational ill health [123KB]
continue to be:
These pages explain what HSE are doing to tackle key issues as well as providing access to a range of information about Health and safety in some of the main food and drink sector industries.
