Inspection Detail

Inspection: 1491638.015 - Conagra Foods Inc.

Inspection Information - Office: Little Rock Area Office

Investigation Summary

At 8:30 p.m. on August 31, 2020, an employee was working for a firm that made frozen specialty foods. Her primary language was Spanish, and she was not able to communicate effectively in English. Her coworkers primarily spoke English. Her safety and health training had been conducted in Spanish. Her proficiency in speaking English was not determined. She was not a day laborer. Her shift length was between 10 and 11 hours a day. She was working in the facility's dinner line 6 north and south area on the dinner line conveyor south. She was working at the end of dinner line 6 next to the turnaround. Her job was to reach onto the conveyor and remove defective products, such as open boxes, dinners without a box, and so forth. The conveyor was approximately 69.3 in. (1.76 m) long and 30.4 in. (772 mm) wide. The measurement was taken by a CSHO using a stack ruler during an inspection. On either side of the conveyor there existed, before the inspection took place, two metal bars to funnel dinners into the turnaround. In this incident, the employee was reaching down into the conveyor to remove a defective product. Her right thumb became caught on the conveyor and pulled between the conveyor and one of the metal bars. Someone pushed the emergency stop. The employee was taken to the hospital. The tip of the employee's right thumb, about half of the thumb, was amputated, either at the hospital or during the incident. The employee was hospitalized.

Keywords: Amputated, Amputation, Caught Between, Caught By, Conveyor, Engineering Controls, Finger, Fingertip, Food Handling, Food processing, Lack of Engineering Controls, Language Barrier, Machine Guarding, Nip Point, Partial Amputation, Surgical Amputation, Thumb, Training, Traumatic Amputation