WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Labor has suspended its July 1 deadline for farmers and others to electronically report their latest figures on farm-related deaths and injuries, a move criticized by safety advocates who fear the delay in reporting the data shields the public from a farm or company’s safety record.

 

Latest statistics show 20.2 farmers and farm workers die among every 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The suspended rule was the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulation; the Final Rule to improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses of 2016 was implemented Jan. l by the Obama administration and covers nearly 441,000 workplaces, including farms. OSHA announced the suspension on May 17.

Across all industries, companies have been required by OSHA since 1971 to maintain workplace data of all deaths, injuries and illnesses; and between 1995-2012, OSHA targeted about 180,000 high-hazard industries, including farms, manufacturing and others, to submit annual summaries by mail. Because the government said this costs an estimated $2 million a year to run, it decided to expand the requirement and transition to a more effective electronic system.

Under the new rule, employers were obligated to send in their safety record summaries by July 1, but OSHA said it never launched a website to capture the data and thus has suspended the program “at this time.” OSHA spokesperson Mandy Kraft told media outlets the agency delayed the rule to address employers’ “concerns about meeting their reporting obligations” in time.

According to the Farm Injury Resource Center, farm workers are 800 percent more likely to die on the job than the average across other industries. “The unfortunate truth is that if you’re a farm worker,” it stated, “you’re working in one of the most hazardous industries in the nation.”

And the CDC estimates from 2000-11 there were 58,000 adult farm injuries – nearly 6,000 more than the number of U.S soldiers wounded in all the years since Sept. 11, 2001. The CDC says there are between 300-400 farmer or farm worker deaths each year. One critic of the OSHA delay, Peg Seminario – the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations’ (AFL-CIO) director of safety and health – said in a trade industry report, “The administration’s action not only limits what the public can learn about work site’s safety records, but what guidance do (OSHA) inspectors have when they decide which establishments to target.

“Without this, OSHA is flying blind because they have no information about workplaces across the country.”

The American Farm Bureau Federation has been successful in lobbying Congress to exempt small farms from most workplace regulations. A farm with fewer than 11 employees is exempt from OSHA inspections and reporting of non-fatal injuries.

OSHA and the DOL did not respond to inquiries from Farm World asking if they intend to reintroduce the electronic requirement at a later date. David Levine, chief executive of the American Sustainable Business Council, which has agricultural industry members, told the Washington Post in an email that his members “are eager to send OSHA their summary injury data.”