Now that you have discussed your dairy’s commitment to health and safety with your farm team and set up your health and safety board, the next step in the process toward developing a solid health and safety program on your dairy is to identify the tasks that pose the highest risk hazards to your team and then develop a safe operating procedure that you can use to train your team on how to conduct the task safely.

Efforts to keep yourself and your workers safe should include a look at potential respiratory hazards that anyone who works on a dairy farm may encounter. Dairy producers are routinely exposed to a wide variety of respiratory hazards on the farm including dusts, molds, vapors, and gases.

In 2021, 33% of all workers in the U.S. were exposed to the outdoors while conducting work. One can assume the percentage of dairy workers exposed to the outdoors is much higher than 33%.

My boys are mostly grown now, but when my eldest was 7 years old, he and his brother were supposed to be playing in the yard while their dad was mixing feed.

Proper fall protection and ladder safety are necessary to prevent serious injuries on the farm.