A worker died at this Gavilon-Peavey grain facility in September 2010. OSHA has cited the company for 46 safety and health violations and said the death "could have been prevented had the grain bin owner and operators followed occupational safety standards."
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has cited Gavilon Grain LLC in connection with the death last September of a 20-year-old worker in Morral, Ohio, who was caught in a discharge auger while cleaning out a grain bin.
Gavilon Grain LLC, which operates as Peavey Co. in Ohio, is a subsidiary of Omaha, Neb.-based Gavilon Group LLC. … After the accident at Gavilon’s Morral site, OSHA also inspected grain bin operations at West Jefferson and Harpster in Ohio. Gavilon was cited for 46 safety and health violations with penalties totaling $465,500.
At least 25 U.S. workers were killed in grain entrapments last year, and the numbers of entrapments are increasing, according to researchers at Purdue University. There were more grain entrapments in 2010 than in any year since the university started collecting data on entrapments in 1978.
Gavilon’s citations included those classified as willful, one committed with intentional knowing or voluntary disregard for the law’s requirements, or with plain indifference to worker safety and health; and serious, one that occurs when there is substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result from a hazard about which the employer knew or should have known.