OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #221407273
SWIFT PREPARED FOODS
OTTUMWA, IA·
Event description
Employee is injured by coworker's hand-skinner
Investigation abstract
At 11:45 or 11:50 p.m. on October 21, 2021, an employee was working as a laborer to a local hospital. He was hospitalized. The injury itself did not cause a permanent disability or other type of damage that would affect the employee for the remainder of his life. In general, the employer trained employees in the use of the handheld skinner and provided them with the PPE needed to protect them from hazards encountered while using the skinner on the pre-final inspection rail. The employer had a training program teaching employees of the importance of PPE and of its necessity. Employees were issued PPE at no cost to them, and line supervisors often coached employees and verbally remediated PPE issues spotted on the floor. In this case, the injured employee had not been equipped with the appropriate PPE for the work area; namely a "whizard" sleeve. The at a slaughterhouse. He was working on the site's pre-final inspection rail. He employee had also not been trained for working on the pre-final inspection rail, as he had been pulled from another area due to the large amount of processing that needed to be completed. A floor supervisor had been informed of the lack of training and lack of appropriate PPE, but no action had been taken to rectify the situation. The injured employee had not been fully trained on the processes that occurred on the pre-final rail nor had he been given all the appropriate PPE for the task. was using a knife. As he turned his body to put the knife in a sterilization pot, a coworker was returning a Best & Donovan model number S-1011 handheld skinner to its fixture on a pillar. The handheld skinner was normally used to remove sections of skin on pig carcasses that contained blemishes or other undesired defects. The skinner came into contact with the employee. It traveled up his right arm and removed the skin. The employee suffered a degloving injury or avulsion. He was seen by onsite first-aid personnel before being transported
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 45 M
- Event type
- 2
- Occupation code
- 889
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.