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health and safety

Jane Fowles Kellogg 2022

Jane Fowles

The New Zealand dairy industry has witnessed a steep growth in the number of workers from the Philippines (Southeast Asia) entering New Zealand to work on dairy farms. Like any dairy farm worker, there is an importance of keeping these migrant workers safe while working. However, with a different cultural background and a different understanding of health and safety, it can be challenging to build health and safety engagement on farm.
Lynsey Stratford

Lynsey Stratford

Despite the introduction of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 and a focus on improving health and safety, the rates of fatality and harm in NZ agriculture remain stubbornly high. This has negative impacts on the sector’s productivity, profitability and sustainability. The consequences for farming families and communities are tragic.

Nicky Barton

Being a great food producing nation comes at the price of almost 20 lives per year in New Zealand. Agriculture records the highest number of deaths of all industries and improving these statistics has proved a challenge for successive regulatory bodies, industry groups and farmers themselves. Almost a quarter of these deaths are those aged … Read more

Jamie Callahan

New Zealand as a country has a proud farming history with our farming culture having been built on a can do, ‘she’ll be right’ mindset. However, this same culture is killing our people. On a per capita basis New Zealand has some of the highest statistics in workplace fatalities with agriculture being the worst performing … Read more

Caroline Fellows

Meeting the requirements of compliance is an area that farmers struggle with. They are great at working the land and with animals and get frustrated at having to slow down to complete what is sometimes seen as needless paper work. Compliance in the agricultural sector is only going to increase and become more complex. Local … Read more

Brad Stevens

Following the introduction of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA) and a fatality on a kiwifruit orchard in 2016, the New Zealand Kiwifruit industry has begun a journey on improving health and safety practices on orchard. There has recently been a proliferation of software solutions to support on-orchard health and safety. This … Read more

Clint Gulliver

New Zealand has a long history around agriculture. Over time farms have grown in size from single owner/operators to more commercial-based, corporate style farms. The average dairy farm size in New Zealand has grown to an average of 413 cows in the 2013/14 season (Walsh, 2014). Due to this growth farm owners have had to … Read more

Cam Brown

Health and Safety in New Zealand’s Agriculture sect or is a hot topic both in the media and in farmer’s discussions. Due to high incidences of injury and deaths in agriculture, farmers are coming under increasing pressure to conform to current legislative standards; however there are multiple issues surrounding both the current and proposed legislation … Read more

Lycinda Lett

There are a large and varying number of roster options in the dairy industry. Over time Canterbury and Southland have become predominant dairying regions which are often seen to run shorter rosters with more staff. Some Waikato dairy farms are still seen to run very long rosters on-farm providing staff with limited time off. The … Read more

Wilson Michelle, A

Accident Compensation Corporation Statistics (ACC Statistics 2009) show that there are on average 30 sudden deaths on farms each year. These figures are only for accidents on farm. They do not include sudden deaths related to medical conditions.(See Appendix A) These statistics highlight the reason why we should all be prepared for the sudden death … Read more