Inspection Detail

Inspection: 1501845.015 - Conagra Foods Packaged Foods, Llc

Inspection Information - Office: Madison Area Office

Investigation Summary

At 7:15 a.m. on November 4, 2020, an employee was working for a firm that made specialty frozen foods. She was a lead or line operator at a food processing facility. She was inspecting equipment on line 6 after it had gone through sanitation. Operators sanitized the line a minimum of every 44 hours of production, per USDA/FDA regulations. The equipment was locked out during sanitation but turned on and running during inspection. Operators had to see if there were any food in the equipment before using it in production. The employee was inspecting a "cluster buster." The cluster buster, located beneath a hopper, had rotating paddles that broke up clumps of frozen vegetables. The employee was using a 3- to 4-foot (0.9- to 1.2-m) ladder to inspect the cluster buster. During sanitation, the cluster buster was positioned with an opening at the bottom exposing its rotating parts. The cluster buster's opening for visual inspection was 104 inches (8.66 feet, or 2.64 m) above the floor. It was 6.5 inches (165 mm) wide and 32 inches (0.81 m) long. While looking through the opening with a flashlight to inspect the equipment, the employee noticed a piece of carrot on one of the cluster buster's rotating paddles. She tried to dislodge the piece of food from the rotating blade with a water hose for about ten minutes. That didn't work. After several minutes of spraying with the water hose, she gave up and reached into the rotating parts to clear the food with her hand. The tip of the middle finger on her right hand was caught between a rotating paddle and a fixed object. The tip of that finger was amputated. The employee was treated without hospitalization. In an interview, the employee said that the sanitation supervisor showed her how to use a stepladder to inspect and wash away food in the cluster buster. The employee had been using the stepladder for about two weeks before the incident. She said that she had not received energy control training on line 6 before the incident.

Keywords: Amputated, Amputation, Caught Between, Cleaning, Finger, Fingertip, Food Preparation, Food processing, Hose, Inspection, Instantaneous amputation, Ladder, Lockout, Lockout/Tagout, Machine operator, Mixer, Mixer Blade, Opening, Reach, Reaching, Reaching From Ladder, Reaching In, Rotating Parts, Sanitation, Stepladder, Training, Traumatic Amputation, Water, Water Hose