Health and Safety in Ontario Agriculture: Hazards and Strategies

AUTHOR ABSTRACT

This brief highlights the changing face of Ontario Agriculture. The past 25 years have seen dramatic shifts in population, increasing reliance on mechanization, use of chemicals, and the emergence of farm employment as a major contributor to farm productivity. These developments have added new hazards and increased the risks associated with old hazards.

The legal framework in which occupational health and safety operates in Ontario agriculture is presently characterized by exemption. These exemptions have limited the application of occupational health and safety strategies which have been developed to protect other Ontario workers.

The brief argues that progress in agricultural occupational health and safety requires a broadly-based mixture of strategies. Legislation, employee participation, education, information, and engineering are important and inter-related strategies which need to be developed or strengthened in a mix of strategies appropriate to the hazards of agricultural work. The brief makes few recommendations concerning the mechanisms by which these strategies should be implemented, but points out that mechanisms developed in a cooperative and consultative manner are likely to be more sensitive to the needs of the total agricultural community and thus more productive.

SOURCE AND NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE ID#

SOURCE: Brief to the Ontario Task Force on Health and Safety in Agriculture. Hamilton, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety; 1985. 25.

NLOM ID#: No ID#.