Case Farms issued the following response to OSHA’s recent press release concerning the company’s Winesburg, Ohio processing facility.
“Case Farms received OSHA’s proposed citations and penalties regarding our Winesburg, OH processing plant. We disagree with the alleged citations and penalties published by OSHA and plan to aggressively defend our position. We disagree with OSHA’s assessment that the new state-of-the-art equipment installed in Winesburg three years ago as part of a $130 million plant improvement and expansion does not contain the proper machine guarding.
“Case Farms takes safety very seriously. We regularly train our team members in all aspects of safety. We conduct safety committee meetings with team members, and we welcome their ideas to improve safety. Our goal is for our team members to leave our facility the same way they arrived.
“Case Farms had previously partnered with OSHA to improve our safety programs up to and including a Safety and Health Management System. During our partnership in conjunction with an outside safety consultant recommended and approved by OSHA we followed through on changes necessary to ensure a safe work environment for our associates. We had OSHA management personnel out to our facility to show them the significant changes and improvements we have made. The proof of our commitment is definitively demonstrated by our results. During that time, we made over $3 million in safety-related capital improvements and repairs, invested over $400,000 in the outside safety consulting firm which resulted in additional safety-related programs and equipment. In addition, we have increased our professional safety team from one professional to three professionals in our plant to continuously provide safety training to our team members.
“We value our team members and are committed to a safe and healthy work environment. As a result, our Winesburg poultry complex has currently reached over 3.2-million-man hours worked or 720 days without a lost time accident. This ongoing success highlights our unwavering commitment to safety and underscores our dedication to ensuring the well-being of our employees. Our Winesburg complex total recordable incidence rate and DART (days away restricted or transferred) rate has improved for the past four years as evidenced by the chart below.
| Year | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
| Total Recordable Incident Rate [Industry in Brackets] | 2.01 [5.9] | 1.35 [5.7] | 0.74 [5.7] | 0.24 [N/A] |
| DART Rate [Industry in Brackets] | 1.46 [3.7] | 0.94 [3.4] | 0.25 [3.4] | 0.12 [N/A] |
“The results of our investment and commitment to a safe environment for our associates are more than evidenced by our results. Our current injury rates are 87% below the industry average. While the results of our commitment are evident by our improved safety rates, Case Farms will continue to invest in continuous improvements to our safety culture. Our commitment is to provide the safest work environment in our industry.”
