NEWS IN DETAIL...
Duchy Students and Young Farmers have a Lesson in Life at Health and Safety Event
On Wednesday 8th February Duchy College Stoke Climsland played host to a special training event to help cut the number of farm deaths in the UK.
The health and safety record in agriculture is among the worst of any industry. A key message underpinning the event was that if all the students who attended went on to work in agriculture, statistics predict, one in ten of them would be killed or seriously injured at work in the next ten years.
The session saw demonstrations take place in the sports hall and the agriculture workshops. They included safe use of ATV's, manual handling, safe use of chainsaws, safety with livestock, PTO's, telehandlers, electrocution and dust and chemicals. The session covered health as well as safety, pointing out that just because something like dust is less visible doesn't mean it isn't harmful.
The day was attended by Rob Pearce from the Health and Safety Executive who highlighted the challenges for everyone involved in agriculture towards overcoming its poor health and safety record. Rob said "I think that this age group is the most important to influence if we are to reduce accidents in the agricultural community and this event clearly did that. Not only that, but those who presented the scenarios clearly enjoyed doing it and the audience was given a very different view of agriculture, and one which I believe they could relate to."
The event was kindly sponsored by the countryside insurers Cornish Mutual, and many thanks go to Kath Strang for doing an excellent job of organising the day.
