Research—
Food manufacturing's amputation problem: 46% of severe injuries cost a body part
In food and beverage manufacturing, 3,416 of 7,356 federal OSHA severe-injury reports — 46% — are amputations, nearly double the 26% rate across the whole archive. Inside meatpacking and food processing's machine-guarding crisis.
No sector in the federal OSHA severe-injury archive loses body parts at the rate food manufacturing does. Of the 7,356 severe-injury reports filed by employers in NAICS sector 31 (food, beverage, and related manufacturing), 3,416 — 46% — are amputations. Across all 105,313 reports in the archive, the amputation share is 26%. Food manufacturing runs nearly double the national rate.
A machine-guarding story
The cause is structural. Meatpacking, poultry processing, and packaged-food plants run on grinders, augers, band saws, slicers, and conveyors — machines whose moving parts sit inches from a worker's hands on a fast line. When guarding fails or a worker reaches in to clear a jam, the result is an amputation rather than a bruise. A further 4,822 of the sector's reports (66%) involved a hospitalization, and the two categories overlap heavily.
The poultry-and-meat belt
The state ranking follows the geography of American meat and poultry processing. Each count opens the live records behind it.
| State | Food-mfg severe injuries |
|---|---|
| Texas | 845 |
| Georgia | 637 |
| Arkansas | 354 |
| Nebraska | 310 |
See all 3,416 food-manufacturing amputation records, the broader picture of amputations across manufacturing, or how every sector compares.
Method & source
All counts are live queries against the federal OSHA Severe Injury Report archive (events dated 2015-01-01 through 2025-10-31) indexed by Safety Incidents, which holds 105,313 reports. Sector figures count reports whose primary NAICS begins with 31 (food, beverage, and tobacco manufacturing); the amputation and hospitalization shares are of the 7,356 reports in that sector and overlap, since one injury can be coded both. Reproduce any figure by applying the same filters on the search page. Severe-injury reporting has been mandatory for most employers under federal OSHA jurisdiction since January 2015; the 22 states running their own OSHA-approved plans report separately and are under-represented here — see the 22-state blind spot.