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A 59-year-old Bridgeville man will be mourned this weekend after a serious work injury at a southern Delaware chicken processing plant killed him in early October.
Police did not name the victim in a press release outlining the accident, but an obituary published in the Cape Gazette and independently confirmed by Newsday named him as Nicaraguan Rene Araouz, who was three. child’s father.
Arauz died on October 5 at Beebe Hospital in Lewis after a pallet truck battery fell on him while he was replacing batteries at the factory, according to police.A funeral will be held in George Town on Saturday morning, followed by a burial in Nicaragua, the obituary said.
As outlined in a citation published by OSHA, Arauz died in Harbeson area factories over the past few years with more than a dozen worker safety violations.
Both serious injuries occurred after a lengthy censure against the plant operator in 2015, OSHA said Alan Harim failed to properly report injuries, its facility lacked proper medical oversight, and “the facility’s medical management practices caused An environment of fear and distrust.”
OSHA also found that, in some cases, employees had to wait up to 40 minutes to use the toilet, and conditions at the facility “are or may cause serious bodily harm to employees” due to repetitive movements and heavy labor.A chicken processing plant.
These conditions are exacerbated by a lack of proper equipment and can lead to “musculoskeletal disorders, including but not limited to tendinitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, trigger thumb and shoulder pain,” OSHA said.
OSHA is proposing a $38,000 fine for the violations, which the company disputes.In 2017, the U.S. Department of Labor, Allen Harim, and the National Federation of Food and Commercial Workers, Local 27, reached a formal settlement that required companies to address worker safety violations through upgrades to equipment and training, as well as other “reduction” measures.
Allen Harim also agreed to pay a $13,000 fine — a third of what was originally proposed.The settlement also includes not guilty pleas to the charges outlined in the OSHA citation.
A representative for Alan Harim did not respond to a request for comment.Union representatives declined to comment.
Delmarva poultry spokesman James Fisher said “employee safety is paramount to the poultry industry” and said the industry had lower rates of injury and illness than other agricultural industries.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, from 2014 to 2016, the poultry industry nationwide reported nearly 8,000 injuries each year, a slight increase in the number of injuries but a slight decrease in the number of sick people.
The illness and injury rate of 4.2 cases per 100 workers in 2016 was an 82 percent increase from 1994, Fisher said.He said more than a dozen processing plants, hatcheries and feed mills in Del Marva have been accredited by the Joint Industrial Safety and Health Committee, made up of representatives from other poultry industry committees, for their recognition based on injury statistics and other Assessed ‘Record of Improved Workplace Safety’.
Allen Harim, previously listed by Newsday as the 21st largest poultry producer in the United States, employs nearly 1,500 workers at its Harbeson plant.According to Delmarva Poultry Industry, there were more than 18,000 chicken workers in the region in 2017.
OSHA has cited the company in the past for failing to properly report injuries at its Harbeson facility.
While the Oct. 5 death was the only fatal accident reported in recent years related to a Delaware chicken plant, workers were at risk in an industrial setting where millions of chickens were slaughtered, boned, sliced ​​and packaged Chicken breasts and thighs for barbecue sitting on the shelf of a refrigerated store.
Delaware police declined to verify the death toll at the Delaware Chicken Plant without a Freedom of Information Act request, but the Department of Forensic Science said only one has been recorded since 2015.Newsday is awaiting a response to the FOIA request.
Since the 2015 notice to Allen Harim, OSHA has found several other violations at the facility that federal officials say could have resulted in employee harm.Three incidents reported this year, including the death in October, are still under investigation.
OSHA has six months to complete its investigation into the fatal accident.Delaware State Police said Wednesday that the case is still under investigation, pending results from the Delaware Department of Forensic Science.
In the past, OSHA has also cited worker safety violations at the Allen Harim feed mill in Seaford.This includes incidents reported in 2013 related to combustible materials.Due to the age of the report, the original citation has been archived by OSHA.
Violations were found at Mountaire Farms’ Millsboro-area facility in 2010, 2015 and 2018, while OSHA inspections have uncovered violations at the company’s Selbyville facility every year since 2015, according to OSHA. behavior, detected at least once in 2011.
The citations included allegations similar to those at Allen Harim’s Harbeson plant that performing stressful manual tasks without proper equipment could cause serious injury.In 2016, OSHA found that workers who cut and deboned meat were also exposed to conditions that could lead to musculoskeletal disorders.
OSHA has issued a $30,823 fine for the violations, which the company disputes.Other violations uncovered in 2016 and 2017 related to employee exposure to ammonia and phosphoric acid — which carry additional fines of more than $20,000 — have also been challenged by the company.
Company spokeswoman Cathy Bassett referred to a recent industry award for worker safety and education and training at these facilities, but did not directly respond to violations identified by OSHA inspectors.
“Safety has always been our number one priority and a very important part of our corporate culture,” she said in an email.”We work closely with OSHA to identify and correct problems before they become problems.”
Perdue Farms also has a history of worker-related hazards.Perdue’s Georgetown facility has found no violations, but the Milford facility has had at least one violation a year since 2015, according to OSHA records.
Those violations included serious injuries in 2017.In February, an employee got an arm stuck on the conveyor while pressure-washing the conveyor system, causing skin to fall off.
Eight months later, another employee’s work gloves got stuck in a device, crushing three fingers.That injury resulted in the employee’s ring and middle fingers being amputated to the first knuckle and the tip of his index finger removed.
Joe Forsthoffer, director of communications at Perdue, said the injuries were related to a so-called “lockout” or “tagout” process to ensure equipment is shut down before any maintenance or sanitation work begins.He said the company is working with a third party to review the process as part of OSHA’s resolution of the violations.
“We regularly audit and evaluate our factory safety processes to continuously improve workplace safety,” he said in an email.”Our Milford facility currently has more than 1 million safe production hours, George Town has nearly 5 million safe production hours, and the OSHA accident rate is significantly lower than that of the entire manufacturing industry.”
The company has faced fines of less than $100,000 since its first violation in 2009, recorded by OSHA enforcement examining an online database, and has paid only a fraction of that through formal and informal settlements.
Please contact reporter Maddy Lauria at (302) 345-0608, mlauria@delawareonline.com or Twitter @MaddyinMilford.