What are the health and safety rules for the processing of milk and its derivatives?
The processing of milk and its derivatives entails specific requirements for technical occupational safety. They mainly concern employees who have direct contact with the processed raw materials. They impose the obligation to prevent and remove from work people with damaged epidermis of hands.
When running a plant whose business profile focuses on the processing of milk and its derivatives, it is necessary to ensure special conditions in the field of occupational health and safety. In the case of employers employing employees as part of the processing of milk and its derivatives, provisions of a special rank are contained in the Regulation of the Minister of Agriculture and Food Economy of 26 October 1998 on occupational health and safety in the processing of milk and its derivatives.
The role of the plant engaged in the processing of milk and its derivatives is to properly organize the work process. Among the employees of plants involved in the processing of milk and its derivatives, a special category can be distinguished – employees employed directly in production. When providing work, they have direct contact with the processed raw materials and products. In the case of this category of employees, the regulations provide for special restrictions on the possibility of working.
Damage to the epidermis of the hands means that people performing work in conditions of direct contact with raw materials or products should not be allowed to work. Prohibition of admission to work means a situation in which an employee presents himself at an agreed time to a milk processing plant and the employer, direct supervisor, person managing employees or other person organizing the work process, having knowledge of damage to the epidermis of the hands of the employed person, makes a decision on whether to allow or not to allow him to work.
In addition to the ban on admission to work – before it is started, it is worth mentioning the ban on allowing the employee to continue working due to damage to the epidermis of the hands. Although the regulations do not directly regulate the issue of removing an employee from work, in asituation where during it it turns out that the skin of the employee’s hands is damaged, but removing the employee is in such a case the most justified and legal action.
It is worth noting that the provision of the Regulation on health and safety in milk processing prohibiting the admission of an employee uses the phrase „damaged epidermis of hands”. This means that the employer’s decision not to allow the employee to work and to remove him from the work already performed applies if the damage to the epidermis includes not only the hands – but also places located higher.
The recipe uses the plural – it speaks of hands, not hands. This may suggest that in order for the employee’s non-admission to work to be justified, both the right and left hands should be characterized by damaged epidermis. However, it seems that the pural used in the recipe is only a kind of „mental shortcut” and a certain simplification. Thus, it should be assumed that damage to the epidermis of one limb will justify not allowing the employee to work.
The provision from which it follows that employees with damaged epidermis of hands should not be allowed to work requiring direct contact with the processed raw materials does not directly result in obligations for the employees themselves. It should be assumed, however, that awareness of hand skin damage requires employees to act properly, corresponding to the employer’s obligation to prevent them from working.
Certainly, an employee who knows that the condition of the skin of his hands may raise doubts in the context of safe work – both for himself and the products with which he comes into contact. The employee should report his doubts to the supervisor or other person managing the employees. This involves at least temporarily refraining from work – until the supervisor decides whether in a particular case there are grounds for removing the employee from work or preventing it from performing it. If it is not possible to immediately contact the superior person, it should be assumed that the employee has not so much the right as the obligation to refrain from work in a situation where the epidermis damage occurred during the performance of work-related tasks.
In practice, it may be extremely problematic to assess to what extent the condition of the employee’s hands justifies the employee’s non-admission to work or refraining from performing it by the interested party himself. The problem arises from the fact that the regulations using the concept of damaged epidermis do not define what it is and what criteria should be adopted when inspecting the condition of the employee’s hands in the context of not allowing him to work. The problem of assessing whether in a given case the situation fits into the damage to the epidermis is of key importance. Certainly, an injury in the form of a wound resulting from a cut in the hand fits into the concept of damage to the epidermis, which certainly disqualifies the employee from the work process.
An important problem for the employer is the issue of the period for which the employee should be removed from work due to damaged epidermis of the hands. In the absence of specific regulations, it should be assumed that non-admission to work will be justified as long as the damage to the epidermis does not heal. Because the employer may have a problem with the correct assessment of the situation, it seems that a good solution is for the employee to go to a doctor who, through the prism of his duties, will determine whether in a given case the damage to the epidermis justifies removal from work.
In this case, if the damage to the epidermis is evident, the employee should receive a medical certificate of temporary incapacity for work. It is necessary to assess differently the ability to work of a car mechanic whose epidermis of the hand has been damaged and otherwise an employee of a milk processing plant.
An establishment dealing with the processing of milk and its derivatives may employ not only persons having the status of workers. The regulations do not require that persons who have direct contact with products or raw materials are only persons who have a contract of employment with the plant.
The problem is that the provisions of the regulation speak about employees and the regulation itself, as already mentioned, was issued on the basis of the Labor Code. This may suggest that the rules resulting from it apply only to employees. However, such reasoning does not seem to be correct. Damage to the epidermis can be the same threat to the milk processing production process, both when an employee with an employment contract or a person employed under a civil law contract participates in it. In addition, it should be noted that the role of every employer – including the operator of a milk processing plant – is to ensure proper health and safety conditions not only for employees – but for every person providing work, regardless of the basis of employment.
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