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Grain Rescue Demos Are Dangerous

Editorial calls for an end to the use of teenagers as victim participants

A teenage girl is immobile and nearing panic, buried to her chin in grain. With every exhalation of breath, the grain grips tighter, pushing hard against her chest and constricting her lungs. Rescue personnel move in to separate girl from grain using a tube, while a rapt audience, unaware of danger averted, applauds as an entrapment demonstration ends. And the band plays on.

The Farm Journal's Pork says the agriculture industry is placing its youth directly in harm’s way according to an editorial signed by leading safety experts and ag engineers. The editorial, “Let’s Stop Treating Our Youth Like Dummies,” calls for an end to the use of teenagers as victim participants in grain entrapment rescue demonstrations, and describes the practice as a one-way road to serious injury or death.

Released Feb. 7, 2017, “Let’s Stop Treating Our Youth Like Dummies,” is authored by Bill Field, professor of agricultural health and safety at Purdue University, and director of AgrAbility.

“It’s appallingly irresponsible to bury high school kids for rescue demonstrations,” he says. “I’ve observed the practice firsthand, and some of my counterparts in other states have seen the same thing. We distributed the letter to raise awareness and stop it.”

The use of kids in grain entrapment training is not isolated, Field emphasizes, but occurs consistently in multiple states and locations. Field has collected photos of over 50 kids buried to the neck at training sessions or recreational situations, and says the growing cache of pictures is a time bomb due to the inherent danger of bulk grain. “I can’t say it enough times: Someone is going to get badly hurt or killed.”

Read the full report at The Farm Journal's Pork.

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