Identifying physical hazard for intensive pig and cattle breeding operators and defining prevention measures

The aim of this paper is to highlight the main objectives and achievements of the project "Identifying chemical, physical and biological hazards for intensive pig and cattle breeding operators and defining prevention measures", carried out by the Lombardy Region with the aim of enhancing the effects of the programme “preventive interventions in agriculture”. The project has therefore strongly affected preventive policies at local and regional levels. Since primary production is "a complex system", a systematically integrated approach has been necessarily adopted, therefore different bodies and levels of government have been involved in the project in order to devise a regional integrated agricultural policy. The characteristic of the regional plan and its implementation at local level is to pursue integrated objectives in many fields: • information (registers of accidents and occupational hazards, analysis of the prevention at farm level and its evolution); • measures (definition of priorities and information campaigns); • training (production and dissemination of educational materials and manuals, setting up of communication strategies with all those involved, systematic training for public officials); • development (devising of guidelines, promotion and validation of crop and/or sector exposure/risk profiles, promotion of farm management systems taking into account prevention measures). This research project was perfectly in tune with the broader context of activities, providing essential information and contributing to the drafting of the guidelines on hygiene and safety in rural buildings "(BURL of 10/02/2006, 3 ° suppl. Overtime) and to the promotion of farm management systems taking into account prevention measures. The project activities have analysed all preliminary aspects necessary to describe the production, and provide a framework to define risk factors and to identify a representative sample of the main breeding and production techniques in order to assess, even by quantitative measures, chemical, physical, biological risk factors. In particular, and to be concise, this work quantifies the main physical hazards (lighting, microclimate, noise) with detailed measurements and explains the main prevention measures put forward for intensive dairy cattle and pig farming.