Ace Bakery fined $55K after worker injured in food processing plant

December 19, 2018 – Ace Bakery Ltd. has been fined $55,000 by Ontario provincial offences court after pleading guilty to an offence involving a worker’s critical injury at its food processing plant in Mississauga, Ontario.

The incident took place August 8, 2017, when a worker was performing maintenance work on a bread machine at the workplace. The Ontario Ministry of Labour reports that the guillotine knife on the machine needed to be adjusted so that the knife would cut the dough evenly. The work was being performed in the presence of a supervisor and a senior director of product development.

In order to access the relevant portion of the machinery, the worker first opened a safety gate. This gate is interlocked so that when it is opened, the machinery cannot be activated or started.

The worker then opened the doors to a mechanical cabinet on the machine in order to access mechanical components to make the adjustments. These cabinet doors were not equipped with interlocks and the worker did not activate the emergency stop button, shut down or lock out the machinery.

While the worker and the senior director of product development were making the adjustments in the mechanical cabinet, the supervisor closed the interlocked safety gate. This caused the bread machine to activate and cycle.

The worker received crushing injuries while caught between one of the machine’s moving parts and the frame of the bread machine. The machine was stopped and the worker was taken to hospital for treatment.

The Ministry of Labour says that Ace Bakery failed to ensure that the machines cannot start if it may endanger the safey of any worker, as per the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

The court also imposed a 25-per-cent victim fine surcharge as required by the Provincial Offences Act. The surcharge is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.