Personal Safety

Farming continues to be one of the most hazardous sectors in which to work, with hundreds of accidents and incidents occurring every year. A fundamental part of running a successful pork production unit is knowing how to reduce these numbers. Help keep your farm safe by making good use of Penn State Extension resources. Topics covered include animal handling tips, biosecurity, ammonia monitoring, and manure storage hazards.

Safe Hog Handling

Accidents occur every year, and they can be caused by several different things, such as machinery, tractors, or human error. Animals aren’t often seen as being a danger, but with each animal having its own personality it’s crucial to recognize and be aware of the risks. Safety is of paramount importance

It is thought that the leading cause of livestock handling accidents is poor judgment. A lack of understanding of animal behavior is also an overriding factor. It’s crucial for animal handlers to be alert at all times, and to have an awareness of the three principles of swine behavior. They are animal flight zones, points of balance, and their blind spot.

Gas Monitoring and Personal Safety

Something else to be aware of is the levels of hazardous gas. If swine housing facilities are not correctly ventilated, there is a danger of ammonia gas building up in the air. Proper air quality is essential for both the health and well-being of animals and farm employees.

Toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide can also build up to dangerous levels around manure storage areas. Relatively inexpensive instrumentation can be used to monitor and detect toxic gas concentrations, thereby allowing reduction measures to be taken.

Pig Farm Biosecurity

When an infectious organism is imported into a herd of pigs, transmission between animals can have a catastrophic effect on the production unit, and cause food safety and economic concerns. Being able to prevent the spread of infectious diseases within a herd and from farm to farm requires biosecurity measures to be put in place. It is the producers’ responsibility to stay healthy and safe and take precautions to ensure the safety of others.

Farm biosecurity is a series of management practices that can minimize or prevent the transmission of disease with a farm’s herd and other nearby farms. The practices can include testing and screening for infectious agents, isolating and quarantining animals that have been infected, immunization, selective purchasing, animal monitoring, and herd evaluation. All these can reduce the chances of disease occurring.

While diseased animals are an obvious risk for their owners, healthy farm animals can also cause illness in people. One such example is e-coli. Microorganisms such as these can be carried by the herd and pose a serious hazard to human health. Young children, the elderly, and immune-compromised people are particularly at risk. An e-coli infection begins with severe abdominal cramps and non-bloody diarrhea and is most often transmitted by the ingestion of contaminated food.