The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is urging farm families to keep their children safe this half-term.
As schools across the nation break up for the October holidays this weekend, children who would usually be in the classroom will now be at home during the day.
This can pose childcare issues for farming families, especially at a busy time in agriculture.
The HSE is warning that agriculture has one of the highest fatal injury rates of any industry in Great Britain, and is the only high-risk industry that also sees children often present.
Children and young people up to the age of 18 have been injured and have died on farms, it said, adding that eight children were killed on farms in the five years up to March of this year alone.
‘Working farms are no place for children’
HSE’s acting principal inspector for the agriculture sector, Wayne Owen, said: “The best way to ensure the safety of children is simply to keep them away from the working farm.
“Working farms are no place for children.”
However, the inspector added that if children are present, then safety precautions need to be taken
“But, if children are visiting the farm workplace, they must be kept away from higher risk areas such as operating machinery, slurry pits and bale stacks, and most importantly they should be with an adult who understands the risks on the farm and is not engaged in any work activity,” he said.
“If older children are starting to help out on the farm, anything but the very simplest of tasks is likely to expose them to risk of injury or death and is unacceptable.
“Children under 13 should not under any circumstances operate or ride on agricultural machinery – it is illegal – and children under 16 should not operate adult-sized all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) in the farm workplace,” he said.
The most common causes of death and injury in the last decade for childen include being killed by moving vehicles, coming into contact with operating machinery, falling from height, being killed by animals, and being struck by falling objects.
