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When it comes to food processing equipment, there are many health and safety regulations. There are also many health and safety regulations that are ignored, resulting in accidents and injuries of the digit variety among others.

People do some stupid things when it comes to the safety of their fingers and thumbs. I’ve seen that first hand - excuse the pun! My brother in law decided to adjust the chain of his ride-on lawn mower while it was running bringing about the loss of one finger and lo and behold, the following year saw him stick his hand in the engine of a Land Rover losing another finger.

Ok, so we may have multiple fingers where other body parts are usually limited to one or two but they are all there for a reason and we find it very difficult to manage without. My brother in law couldn’t play the piano after losing the first digit and gave up the guitar entirely once the second one was a gonna too.

Of course, our hands are exposed all the time and this makes them more susceptible to damage. That is precisely why health and safety regulations are implemented and the thought of lost body parts in food processing equipment is a stomach churning thought.

A plant in the UK that uses food processing equipment has seen two workers lose digits recently. They claim that the machinery had been reported as faulty recently but management had neglected to implement repairs. This food processing equipment plant supplies food to major supermarkets and in this age of compensation claims, they surely cannot afford to misplace digits.

Workers who use vibrating machinery in cold temperatures, as food processing equipment often is, are also liable to the ravages of Vibration White finger. The results are pins and needles, tingling, whiteness of the fingers and numbness. In extreme cases, fingers can be lost and compensation claims for this have seen five figure sums being bandied about.

A woman in the US has made a pretty good income of fake compensation claims. Her career has been brought to an abrupt end recently with the discovery of her antics. She claims to have bitten into a workers amputated finger in her burger in a fast food outlet in California. The bad publicity led to the loss of $2.5 million.

The woman responsible, it was discovered, had done this before. Other establishments had paid her an out of court settlement to avoid bad press even though no workers had reported losing any fingers in food processing equipment. You’d think they would notice!

The woman was actually able to produce a real finger that she had purchased for $100 from a construction worker who had it amputated in an earlier accident. How she managed this several times, I do not understand.

Does she have a disembodied finger collection? Does she advertise for amputated body parts? Maybe she buys them over the internet - god knows, some people will sell anything these days!

Of course, if extra fingers are freely available, it would give her a distinct advantage when it came to eating a bag of hula hoops. Even the extra big bags you can buy these days, or the multi packs, she could eat them in the same time it takes the average person to eat a small bag!

I’m quite sure the hula hoop manufacturers are extremely careful when it comes to fingers in their food processing equipment. After all, what’s the point of advertising food that fits like a ring on your finger if the staff are a few digits short of a full hand?

Safety expert Catherine Harvey looks at the inherent risks offood processing equipment if safety rules are not adhered to. To find out more please visit http://www.superiorfoodmachinery.com/