Inspection blitz focuses on asthma and MSDs
Unions have welcomed the HSE’s warning to food manufacturing employers that they face serious penalties if they do not “pay closer attention to how they manage workplace health risks”.
At the beginning of this month, the safety watchdog announced a programme of unannounced inspections focusing on two of the main causes of ill-health in the sector, occupational asthma and musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs).
In order to reduce cases of occupational lung disease, the HSE initiative focuses on exposure to flour dust in bakeries, cake and biscuit manufacturers and grain mills.
Shopworkers’ union Usdaw has welcomed the focus on these health issues, but the union’s health and safety officer Doug Russell also said that similar attention should be paid to the local-authority regulated sector.
Proactive inspections by council environmental health officers have plummeted, and expertise within environmental health departments lost, as a result of successive Tory governments’ deregulation and austerity policies.
“Most bakeries where the bread is baked from scratch, and where there is high exposure to flour dust, are enforced by local authorities and we will be raising this with the HSE Local Authority Unit HELA,” Russell told Workplace Report. “The HSE should also be inspecting other workplaces where there is a high risk of workers developing occupational asthma, including those manufacturing snacks, cereals and processed frozen foods, not just bakeries.”