OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #221474877

SOUTH BAY SAFETY INC.

VERNON, CA· 2022-01-07T00:00:00

Event: Amputated, Amputation, Blade, Cutting, Engineering Controls, Finger, Food processing, Hand, Injury Illness Prevention Program, Jammed, Lack of Engineering Controls, Lack of Work Procedures, Lockout, Lockout/Tagout, Machine Guarding, Machine operator, Meat Processing, Meat Slicing Machine, Slicer, Staffing Agency, Struck Against, Temporary Employment Agency, Temporary Worker, Thumb, Troubleshooting
NAICS: 561311
Inspection type: Accident-driven
Activity number: #345783740
Employer profile: SOUTH BAY SAFETY INC.
Summary number: 221474877
Report ID: 0950635

Event description

Employee amputates four fingers when coworker activates slic

Investigation abstract

At 8:10 a.m. on January 7, 2022, an employee who was working at a meat packing product is dispensed as thinly sliced pieces of meat. In between the front and rear ends is the middle section that contains the metal blade. The front end has a control panel with several buttons including: (1) Single Cut, (2) Forward, (3) Back, (4) Start, and (5) Stop. Coworker #1 went over to the machine, stood at the front end, and kneeled down to observe the blade. The employee went over to the rear end of the machine to observe the blade from that end. Unbeknownst to the employee and Coworker #1, Coworker #2 was standing on the opposite side of the machine from where the employee and Coworker #1 was standing. As Coworker #1 and the employee were observing the blade, the employee was communicating to Coworker #1 that she had placed her right hand underneath the blade. For reasons and processing facility encountered a problem with a Curl Slicer Machine. The not indicated in the narrative, Coworker #2 suddenly pressed the "Start Button" on the Control Panel on the front end, which caused the blade to move down and strike the employee's right hand. The employee amputated her thumb, index, middle and ring fingers, requiring hospitalization. employee was a temporary employee hired by a staffing agency. The employee noticed the machine was not cutting the meat properly, as evidenced by excess pork build-up on the blade, which caused it to intermittently jam upon cutting. The employee called Coworker #1 (Immediate Supervisor) to assist in identifying, diagnosing and analyzing this machine to determine the cause of this issue. The machine consists of a front end and a rear end. The rear end is where large raw chunks of pork are loaded into the machine and the front end is where the final

Victim

#1 Hospitalized Age 33 F

Event type
6

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.