07:36 pm, Saturday 21 April, 2012

A worker was seriously injured by a piece of machinery in a cotton field at Walgett in Northwest New South Wales this week.

ABC News reports that harvest has started in NSW and Queensland, and workers were under pressure to get the bumper crop picked and processed.

According to Farmsafe Australia executive officer John Temperley, the cotton harvest is a potentially hazardous workplace.

“The size and the scale of machinery associated with cotton picking and harvest; you do get, or the potential’s there to get, really horrific accidents, particularly crush injury under machinery, by rams, being run over.”

WorkCover will conduct an investigation over the incident.

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