Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025
105,991Records 71,450Employers 85,836Hospitalizations 27,959Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-11-30

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #221403967

PRAIRIE FARMS DAIRY, INC. DBA PRAIRIE FARMS DAIRY GRANITE CITY

Event
Amputated, Amputation, Belt, Caught By, Fingertip, Food processing, Guard, Maintenance, Ring, Troubleshooting, Working Alone
NAICS
311511
Inspection type
Referral
Activity number
#345594352
Employer profile
PRAIRIE FARMS DAIRY, INC. DBA PRAIRIE FARMS DAIRY GRANITE CITY
Summary number
221403967
Report ID
0524530

Event description

Employee Amputates Finger While Troubleshooting Packaging Ma

Investigation abstract

At 3:00 a.m. on October 17, 2021, an employee was performing maintenance on an and dragged his hand down the feeder belt, and the guard door box and machine enclosure prevented the employee from freeing his hand from the machine. The employee's left ring finger was amputated at the first knuckle by the pusher paw which continued to move with the feeder belt. The employee received medical treatment for the finger amputation but was not hospitalized. The employee was working alone and no coworkers observed the incident. Evergreen Packaging, Model EQ-70, Serial #22006/16111 packaging machine at a milk processing facility. The employee re-energized the packaging machine to test it during troubleshooting, using maintenance keys to override safety systems and operate the machine while a guard door was open that exposed the feeder belt. While observing operation of the belt, the employee places their left hand on the inside of the feeder belt housing just above the feeder belt while it was operational. The feeder belt contained equally spaced metal bracket "pusher paws." One pusher paw" caught a ring on the employee's left ring finger

Victim

  1. #1 Non-hospitalized injury Age 40 M

    Event type
    2
    Occupation code
    519

Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.