OSH Empowerment of Portuguese Agri-food MSMEs Through the Application of Computational Tools of Risks Assessment

Abstract

The Agri-food Industry is the largest Portuguese Industry, constituted mainly by micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) conditions in an agri-food MSME have its own characteristics depending on the specific food sector. This condition makes the prevention strategies implementation difficult and heightens the problematic of work accidents. In this chapter are described online and offline free computational tools developed to perform OSH risks assessment in the dairy, meat processing, bakery and horticultural subsectors. The tools provide a simple and expedite diagnostic of occupational hazards and risks. Depending on the input data, the tools output identifies successful practices and easy-to-implement solutions for occupational risk prevention. These computational tools aim to empower Portuguese agri-food SMEs to implement innovative OSH management practices in order to prevent work accidents.