Farmer fined Updated June 4 2015

Saturday, May 30, 2015

by SUSAN MANN

Beef producer, Schaus Land and Cattle Co. Limited has been fined $90,000 after pleading guilty in Provincial Offences Court in Orangeville for failing to take reasonable precautions to prevent a worker from falling on the farm and dying two years ago.

The worker, an employee of the neighbouring farm Sunrise Potato Storage Ltd., was at the Mono-area Schaus operation in August 2013 collecting manure. While there, the person fell through an opened hatch door in the barn. The hatch was located near the washroom door and led into the Schaus operation’s underground pump room containing controls for the cattle-watering system.

Wally Schaus declined to comment. “It’s not a good situation and that’s the bottom line – no comments.”

The Sunrise worker was seen on the Schaus farm preparing to transport a truckload of manure, according to an Ontario Labour Ministry press release. The person was later found lying on the pump room floor. The worker succumbed the next day to traumatic brain injuries caused by the fall into the pump room.

Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act requires employers to take every reasonable precaution to protect workers. But Labour ministry investigators determined “there was nothing present at the workplace that could have prevented a worker from falling into the pump room,” the release says.

In addition to the fine, the court imposed a 25 per cent victim surcharge as required by the Provincial Offences Act. The money collected from the surcharge goes into a government fund to help victims of crime. BF

UPDATE June 4 2015: William Lin, a spokesman for the Ministry of Labour, says the fine is the largest the ministry has ever imposed on a farm in the last five years. END OF UPDATE