An earthquake in the midwest: OSHA enforcement reveals faults in the world of agricultural safety

Family dairy enterprises are becoming large dairy operations, replacing family labor with hired workers. This transition absorbs many immigrant, Hispanic, often undocumented workers into a high injury industry. En-route from family farm to medium-sized business, owners may carry internalized acceptance of hazards that make agriculture among the most dangerous US industries. Meanwhile, agricultural academic programs rarely train in safety management. Hispanic immigrant workers often have little experience handling large animals. With limited English and precarious legal status, they cannot or will not assert their rights to a safe workplace. Additionally, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is bridled by congressional limits on applicable standards and workplace enforcement. Thus, this relatively unregulated industry has created little demand for a capable safety consulting workforce until now. In 2012, Region 5 OSHA sent tremors through the industry when it launched a Local Emphasis Program (LEP) inspecting large Wisconsin dairies. Few trained agricultural safety professionals were found when the National Farm Medicine Center developed the Agricultural Safety Consulting service to advise farmers and train workers. With the Migrant Clinicians Network, a Spanish promotor-based safety curriculum was developed and tested. This session will provide an overview of the changing dairy industry in WI and the challenges resulting from the modernization, corporatization and transition to an immigrant workforce. We will highlight how an OSHA LEP influenced farm operations to address safety. In particular, we will discuss hazard abatement strategies, unique unresolved hazards and the training of workers.