10th Annual Farm Safety Week
Farm Safety week comes to an end but the campaign to improve farm safety continues
The CLA have this week been supporting the 10th annual Farm Safety Week.
The statistics of injuries and fatalities in farming is alarming, accounting for 1% of the working population but 18% of all workplace deaths.
According to the HSE (HSE Summary of fatal injuries in Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing Report in GB 2021/2022) 22 farm workers lost their lives on farms in Great Britain between April 2021 and March 2022. Of these 22, 4 occurred in the Midlands region.
As a small charity based in the Midlands but covering the whole of the UK, we have always felt that Farm Safety Week has been something that we had to do. We cannot do it alone so we are proud to have so many partners from the UK and Ireland supporting it.
The improvement from the previous year is very welcome but more work is still required. Raising awareness and challenging a change attitudes with the main focus being on preparing the next generation of farmers to be responsible and put safety at the forefront of what they do will ensure that we continue to make farming a safer industry for workers, families and everyone else involved.
We’ve seen it before that when many voices join together to drive a change, this is when it can happen. There has been an encouraging improvement in the number of farm workers losing their lives on our farms this year - from 41 to 25 and we are starting to see safety improvements in some areas, but the pace of change is slow - too slow for those 25 families that lost a loved one - 7 of which were in the Midlands.
Use the hashtag #FarmSafetyWeek to follow the conversation on social media, follow @yellowwelliesuk on Twitter or find more information on the Farm Safety Foundation website by clicking here.