Animal raising tends to sprout up around spots where it is easy to get feed; it is way cheaper to ship a finished pig than all the grain he eats in his lifetime. That means there are a lot of animal farms in Saskatchewan along side the grain farms (insert socialism joke here). Mechanization has modernized things, but I think the basics of meat processing have not changed much:
In Saskatchewan, the injury claim rates for musculoskeletal disorders are higher in Meat Processing than any other industry, with 6.61 claims per 100FTEs each year compared to 1.97, the average over all industries. At one point I thought this must be the biggest issue, until I found out that lots of private framers opt out of WCB insurance, so their injuries do not show up in claims records. That makes it tricky to have good injury surveillance on these folks, to find out what causes their injuries, and ultimately to prevent them. It looks like I have my work cut out for me.