Feeding livestock is often a twice daily job on all livestock farms throughout the winter, but it can come with many risks and hazards. The pointers below are areas to consider before you next get ready to feed and check your stock.
Hazards
- High dust levels can be produced from dry feed.
- Dust produced contains bacteria, endotoxin, fungi, and insect residues, and can cause lung diseases such as asthma, chronic bronchitis, and farmer’s lung. Enzyme additives may cause asthma.
- Grain dust has a workplace exposure limit (WEL) of 10 mg/m3 (based on an 8-hour time-weighted average). You need to keep exposures as low as is reasonably practicable below this limit.
- Control exposure to stop occupational lung diseases developing – this means short-term as well as long-term exposure.
Caution: Some dusts (e.g., from barley) are very irritating to skin, eyes, and the respiratory tract. Dust from animal dander can cause contact urticaria. You will need to consider this and select the appropriate exposure controls as part of managing the risks.
Access to work area
- Allow access to authorised and appropriately trained people only
Equipment and procedures
- Automate feeding where possible – use enclosed elevators, conveyors, or an auger.
- Use pelletised or slurry feeds, which produce less dust.
- Where manual feeding cannot be avoided, pour feed gently – don’t throw or dump it.
Respiratory protective equipment (RPE)
- Provide RPE for dusty operations.
- Provide RPE with a UK Standard Assigned Protection Factor (APF) of at least 10.
- Fit testing is required for RPE with a tight-fitting face seal.
- Workers wearing tight fitting RPE must be clean shaven, trained how to fit it properly and look after it.
- Tell workers to discard disposable RPE at the end of the shift, or sooner if their RPE becomes blocked with dust.
Change the filters on respirators in accordance with manufacturers’ recommendations and if:
- The shelf-life expiry date has passed.
- They are damaged or visibly contaminated; or
- They become harder to breathe through.
RPE – check and test
- Examine and test non-disposable RPE thoroughly at least once every month and keep a record of these checks.
- Tell workers to check RPE is working properly before every use and ask them to record these checks
- If RPE is required for extended periods, e.g., longer than 1 hour, use powered respirators.
- Keep RPE clean and store it in a clean place.
- Make suitable arrangements for maintenance, storage, and replacement of RPE.
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
- Ask your supplier to help you select suitable PPE.
- Make suitable arrangements for maintenance, storage, and replacement of PPE. Personal decontamination and skincare.
- Provide warm water, mild skin cleansers, and soft paper or fabric towels for drying. Avoid abrasive cleansers.
- Provide pre-work skin creams, which will make it easier to wash dirt from the skin.
- Provide after-work creams to replenish skin oils. Caution: ‘Barrier creams’ are not ‘liquid gloves’ and do not provide a full barrier.
