HSE's latest campaign highlights advice for working safely with livestock, as well as simple vehicle safety tips, to help keep everyone on the farm safe.

HSE is calling on the entire farming industry, on every farmer, the farming community, and every farming organisation to play their part in controlling the risks and change the health and safety culture of the industry. Now is the time to act, before it’s too late.

Through our ‘Work Right Agriculture. Your farm. Your future’ campaign, we are supporting farmers to work safely to prevent injuries.

Working safely with livestock

In the most recent farming statistics published by HSE, injured by animal was the most common cause of death on British farms. We’re asking farmers to respect livestock and the risks involved by considering 3 important areas to ensure they work safely to prevent injuries.

1. ‘The handler’ should be trained and supervised until competent; be agile and in good health. Handling tasks should be planned in advance and incorporate safe ways of working
2. ‘The equipment’ such as the crush, race, calving pens, yokes, gates etc should be suitable for the tasks carried out and be arranged and used so that people and cattle are kept apart as much as possible. Equipment should also be well maintained and work properly – all the time
3. ‘The animal’ should be handled with respect. Bulls can be territorial and cows with calves can be very protective of their young. Consider having bulls ringed at about 10 months, and always use handling aids when moving them. Stock bulls should be kept in purpose made bull pens which meet specific requirements. Farmers should consider culling animals that are habitually aggressive or difficult to handle

Working safely with farm vehicles

Incidents involving moving vehicles remain the top cause of deaths on British farms over a 5-year period. We’re asking farmers to consider vehicle safety in these simple areas of their daily farming activities to help keep everyone on the farm safe.

• Operate a safe farm - keep people and vehicles apart as far as possible
• Be a safe driver - vehicle operators must be trained and competent
• Maintain a safe vehicle - vehicles must be well maintained and should be checked before use by the operator to make sure that they are safe

We have advice for anyone working in agriculture to show that safety on the farm doesn’t need to be difficult or expensive. You can:

• Download our free safety checklists
• Watch our farm safety videos
• Find further details about HSE statistics
• Read the campaign press release

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Source: The Health and Safety Executive (HSE)