Meat + Poultry - October 2016 - 78

WORKER SAFETY

CAREER
CREDENTIALS
John Tignor started his
career in the meat packing
industry running machines
on the production line
and worked his way up
into senior positions.
Along the way, his
education and experience
has been extensive and
impressive. He has:
Studied cardiopulmonary
care through the California
College of Health Sciences
Studied engineering at
Colorado State Univ.
Studied occupational
safety and health at
Columbia Southern
Studied at US Dept. of
Labor's OSHA Training
Institute (holds many of
the same certifications as
OSHA compliance officers)
Works with the Dept. of
Homeland Security (DHS),
operations in the event
of national incident
Worked with FEMA

78

we want to know how safety is going," Tignor
says. "What are the things that are challenging
you over at your company? Here are the things
that we face and we have challenges with. We
talk those types of things through amongst
many of our competitors and the meat industry
representatives. Back in the day, you wouldn't
have talked to any of those folks and shared
your information and your ideas. Those types
of things (not sharing) are gone today."

PROTECTING PEOPLE
With companies today focusing more on
safety, health and injury prevention than
was common in the past, equipment and
technology manufacturers have stepped up
their games as well. And top executives at
companies like Smithfield have signed off on
the capital investments necessary to protect
their people.
Through the years, the meat industry has
worked to reduce the number and severity
of saw-related injuries. Tignor says about 75
percent of Smithfield's saws are belt fed, so
a worker's hands stay clear of the blade, but
there are still some, band saws especially, that
require workers to feed meat into a moving
blade. "That's where BladeStop comes in,"
Tignor says.
BladeStop technology detects when the
blade comes in contact with a body part. In
approximately one-tenth of a second after
detection of contact, the saw will shut down.
"With the BladeStop technology, you barely
get a scratch on a finger, where prior to the
BladeStop, the best we could do was maybe
shut a saw down before it got through two
or three fingers," Tignor says. "BladeStop has
really helped with that. So, it's not something
that goes in place of every saw, but every saw
where we have to have somebody's hands close
to the product, close to a blade to manipulate
the product for a precision cut, that's where
BladeStop technology comes in."
The Smithfield north plant in Smithfield,
Virginia, installed its first BladeStop band
saw last year and Smithfield has since put in
capital appropriation requests to purchase and
install the technology at other locations. "Quite
frankly, it's a very costly process," Tignor says.
Traditional band saws used in processing
plants could cost as much as $20,000. "A
BladeStop is about four to five times that,

MEAT+ POULTRY | 10.16 | www.meatpoultry.com

about $85,000 per unit for us to purchase
and install. And we have to tweak it at every
location for every individual saw. So it's a
big undertaking, but it's one that our senior
leadership here at Smithfield has decided is the
right thing to do."
While the equipment is cost prohibitive
for many processing companies, Smithfield is
committed to upgrading in the name of safety.
"Eventually we'll have BladeStop technology in
most of the locations where we have somebody's
hand close to that blade," Tignor says.
Tignor credits Senior Corporate Director
of Health and Safety at Smithfield Foods,
Gary Walters, and his team at the north
facility in Smithfield with bringing BladeStop
to the company. Once Walters and his team
discovered a safer alternative, they made
contact with the company and began the
procedure of installation and fine tuning.

FINDING THE WAY
John Tignor's path in the industry from
production on the line to where he is today has
been circuitous, yet defined and focused. His
initiation into the health and safety industry
came from working outside the plant as a
fireman and paramedic.
"We had some pretty serious injuries back
in those days and it was one of those things
that after seeing some of my co-workers and
some of my friends seriously injured, and
one guy that I went to school with killed,
I just decided that I had to do something
different," he says. "The opportunity came up
for a supervising paramedic position in our
industrial health services clinic. I decided to
leave production and the work I was doing
there and go into the taking care of people side
of the business."
During his tenure as the supervising
paramedic, Tignor treated a number of serious
injuries that occurred on the processing floor
and even responded to a fatality. At that point,
he committed to doing more than just taking
care of people after they were injured and
focus instead on prevention.
"A position opened up in our safety office at
the facility and I applied and got hired," Tignor
says. "I've been doing health and safety ever
since. It is my passion."
Tignor's been given the opportunity to go
back to the production side of the business,
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