Potato supplier sentenced after worker loses leg in cutting machine
•BlueSafe Team•Source: WorkSafe VIC
Fiorelli Packing Co 2 Pty Ltd has been sentenced after a worker became caught in a potato-cutting machine, leading to a below-knee amputation. The company pleaded guilty to failing to provide or maintain a safe system of work.
The Dandenong Magistrates’ Court sentenced the company on Friday 19 December and ordered it to pay $10,913.68 in costs.
The court heard the warehouse used a potato cutter that fed sweet potatoes from a hopper onto a conveyor belt, where blades cut them into pieces. In September 2022, a supervisor instructed the worker to climb onto the operating machine and hold a broomstick against the hopper to slow the flow of potatoes and spread them across the belt before they reached the cutter.
The worker’s foot slipped into the rotating blades. His supervisor pressed the emergency stop button, but the worker remained trapped and could see part of his severed foot on the conveyor belt. Emergency services freed him and he was taken to hospital. His foot could not be reattached, and his leg was ultimately amputated below the knee.
WorkSafe’s investigation found that workers at the warehouse commonly stood on the operating machine and used a broomstick to improve the flow of potatoes.
The company admitted it was reasonably practicable to reduce the risks of shearing, cutting and entanglement by fitting an interlocked physical guard or perimeter fence to prevent access to the danger area while the machine was running.
It also admitted it was reasonably practicable to ensure an isolation procedure, such as a lock-out tag-out system, was in place before workers performed the task, and to install emergency stop buttons accessible near the machine’s danger area.
WorkSafe Acting Chief Health and Safety Officer Barb Hill described having workers stand near the blades of an operating machine as a disaster waiting to happen. “It pains me to think how much physical and psychological suffering this worker has endured since his life-changing injury, and how easily it could’ve been avoided,” she said.
Hill said allowing an obvious risk to remain uncontrolled until it became standard practice was a disturbing departure from an employer’s basic health and safety duties.
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