Food production is not always a walk in the park. Sometimes people get hurt and sometimes people get killed. Besides the rare incident of being shot at, there are employees you get on the wrong side of, and they won’t shoot you, but there will be a chance of injury. One day, I had a severe disagreement with the lead person on a chicken line. She was acting as my assistant when the incident occurred. I told her to cut a bad leg off of a chicken that was speeding down the line. Instead, she turned her blade against me and tried to stab me. I was able to block the blade from doing any damage and reported the incident to my supervisor. In the end, almost everyone agreed she just slipped while cutting a leg so no foul. I know what happened. I was there.

There are many other ways an inspector may be injured on the job. With all of the equipment with so many moving parts and sharp edges, it’s a wonder more people aren’t hurt. Slips and falls are common but the most common is probably carpal tunnel syndrome which happens among both company workers and inspectors due to constant repetitive movements. Occasionally, a dangerous situation does develop that could result in a serious injury.

I was inspecting kipper beef at a plant one time when things got a little exciting. The kippers are one to two years old, and not as large as the full-sized adults. They still weigh quite a bit- 400 to 500 pounds dressed out. The kip were driven in through a door. As they came in the building, a man with a stunner stunned them then they were bled, and the carcass was passed down a line of butchers who skinned and gutted them. I stood at the end of the line with my back to a large piece of machinery. When the viscera and the carcass arrived, I would do my inspection. One of the kips managed to get past the first butcher without being stunned. It charged down the line straight at me. I had nowhere to go for safety.

As the kip ran down the line, one butcher grabbed it by the head, and another was able to grab a leg. Once it was slowed down, the other butchers swarmed around it and stopped the kip just a few feet from where I stood. By this time, the butcher with the stunner ran up and stunned the animal. If it had kept on going, it would have slammed into me pushing me against the machine.

Another time I was even closer to getting hurt seriously. I was inspecting a herd of bison. Bison are commonly called buffalo, but bison is the correct name for these huge, strong, and wild animals. I was inside the plant right at the dry landing, the place where an animal that was stunned on the outside would fall when they lifted the heavy iron door that separated the knock box outside from the dry landing. They had built a little room right off the dry landing that had no other purpose than to keep the inspector’s paperwork dry. It was an 8×10 foot room erected mostly of wood with only a little sheet of metal coming out of the wall to serve as a desk for my paper work and a regular doorway with no door for the entrance.

I clipped my paperwork to the metal desk just as the first animal of the day was stunned. As the heavy metal door to the dry landing rose, I instinctively turned around. The pitch of the floor in the stunning box would cause the stunned animal to roll out onto the dry landing where a butcher would bleed the animal. They had just stunned a huge bull bison and, as I watched, 2,000 pounds of angry bull bison rolled out onto the dry landing and popped up on its feet. The bull the charged straight ahead into the doorway of the little office.

There was no place for me to go. My heart leaped up into my throat. Luckily, the bull caught its horn on the door frame, rocking the building. I stared into his bloody eyes not more than five feet away and stayed as still as I could. With his vision impaired, he did not see me. Instead, he turned and slammed his horns into the 1” iron door to the knocking box denting it in several places. That left me a little space and a couple of seconds to move. I shot out of the door and ran to a nearby ladder used to access the upper deck. I don’t think I have ever moved as fast as I did on that day. If you had been watching me skinny up that ladder, all you would have seen was a blur.

The bull turned toward the little building again and smashed the door frame before turning to run around the plant looking for an exit while several butchers sought safety on the upper deck like I had. He was finally brought down by one of the butchers who grabbed a high-powered rifle from the office. My hands still sweat just thinking about the incident.

I hope you are enjoying these true stories from the food industry. Nice to see some of your comments. I present these stories so that folks may get a better idea of how their food is produced and what the workers go through to produce it. As always, like and share. Thank you for being my audience.