Butterball garners highest awards for worker safety record

The American Meat Institute recently acknowledged more than 100 meat and poultry plants for outstanding worker safety records in 2011. A few Arkansas plants made the grade.

Butterball came up a big winner garnering the industry’s highest honor for its turkey processing plants in Huntsville and Ozark. The only other meat processing plant in the state to pick up top honors was Land O’Frost Inc. in Searcy. There were 32 facilities to receive the top honor.

Merit awards, the second highest honor, went to Butterball in Jonesboro and Odom’s Tennessee Pride Sausage in Little Rock. AMI gave 35 merit awards.

No other Arkansas meat processing facilities received recognition or commendation for food safety records, according to press release.

"Worker safety progress is one of our industry’s greatest success stories,” said AMI Chairman Larry Odom, president and CEO of Odom’s Tennessee Pride Sausage Inc., who presented the awards.  

“Both the total incidents rate and the more severe lost workday case rate currently stand at all-time lows for the industry. Yet, we must continue to persevere.”

He said the goal of the worker safety program is to motivate participants to improve their safety performance through sound safety and health programs at the plant level and to recognize plants that have achieved a high level of safety performance as part of the continuing effort to reduce injury and illness