Bakery fined $75K for critical worker injury on production line

FGF Brands Inc., a Toronto-based industrial bakery, has been fined $75,000 by Ontario provincial court after pleading guilty to an offence involving a critical injury of a worker.

The court also imposed a 25-per-cent victim fine surcharge, credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.

On May 24, 2018, a young worker was operating a die cut machine, part of the production line that processes dough for naan bread.

In an investigation, the Ontario Ministry of Labour found that while operating the machine, the worker noticed that the dough on the conveyor was getting stuck and reached into the machine to adjust the dough, then received a crushing injury caused by a moving part of the machine.

Section 24 of Ontario Regulation 851 (the Regulation for Industrial Establishments) requires a machine to be equipped with a guard or other device to prevent access to moving parts of the machine that may endanger the safety of a worker.

The die cut machine was not equipped with a device that prevented the worker from accessing the moving parts described above.

Thus, the defendant failed to ensure that the measures and procedures prescribed by section 24 of the regulation were carried out in the workplace, contrary to section 25(1)(c) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

The company has a previous conviction under the same legislation dating from 2017. It was fined $70,000 by the court after a worker was trapped and injured by a dough machine at the same workplace.

New and young workers in Ontario are four times more likely to be injured than other workers, particularly during the first month of employment.