Assessment of Risk Factors of Upper-limb Musculoskeletal Disorders in Poultry Slaughterhouse

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the risks associated with the repetitive movements of the upper limbs in different meat processing tasks in a poultry slaughterhouse. The study was conducted in a company with 4,500 workers that slaughtered 450,000 chickens/poultries per day during the two shifts. The OCRA checklist was used to assess 10% of the total workforce during work tasks. Each worker was filmed for shorter periods of 5minutes. Student's t-test (p≤0.05) was used to compare the risk variable between the sides of the body. The 26 work activities analyzed were the following sectors: cutting (17); evisceration (2); freezing tunnels (2); reception (3) and scalding (2). The average of occupational repetitive actions performed by poultry workers was 63.7±25.3 per minute, representing 9 points in the OCRA's scale (0 to 10 points scale). The average score of OCRA's checklist was 18.3±2.7 (moderate risk). The scores for the right upper limb (18±2.8 - moderate risk) were significantly higher (p=0.014) than the contralateral limb (16.9±3.8 - moderate risk). Considering the five risk categories proposed by the OCRA method, 2 work tasks were considered high risk (8%); 21 represented moderate risk (81%), and 3 were within an low risk (11%). When grouping the high risk tasks with the moderate risk tasks, it was verified that the majority of the slaughterhouse workers were vulnerable to ergonomic hazards by repetitive movements. From these results, it is possible to suggest that poultry processing tasks classified as high (8%) and moderate risk (81%) predispose workers to a greater probability of developing upper limb work-related musculoskeletal disorders (>21.5% probability for high risk and 10.8 to 21.5% for moderate risk).