CANADA—According to the latest Canadian Agricultural Injury Reporting (CAIR) information, agriculture-related fatalities are declining. CAIR is the only source of national agriculture-related fatality data in Canada.
From 1990 to 2001, an average of 116 people died due to an agriculture-related incident. From 2002 to 2012, the average number of agriculture-related fatalities declined to 85 per year. Also encouraging is the fatality rates of all age groups saw decreases in this period.
“The decrease in the fatality rates is encouraging,” says Marcel Hacault, executive director of the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association (CASA). “It means that we are moving in the right direction.”
Between 2003 to 2012, farm machinery continued to be involved in most agriculture-related fatalities with runovers (18 percent), rollovers (18 percent) and being pinned or struck by a machine component (nine percent) accounting for the top three ways people were fatality injured.
Fatality rates due to rollovers and from being pinned/struck by a machinery component also declined. Rollover fatality rates decreased an average of 3.6 percent annually and fatality rates from being pinned/struck by a machinery component decreased an average of 7.8 percent annually.
