The Hazard Assessment Principles guide provides breweries a helpful and consistent guideline for best management practices (BMPs) when developing and improving brewery safety programs, standard operating procedures, and worker safety compliance in the brewery.

Ensuring a Safe Workplace

Employers and employees both bare the responsibility to work together to ensure a safe workplace. Employers must perform workplace hazard assessments to identify where hazards exist and then specify engineering controls, administrative controls, personal protective equipment and safe work practices, and provide training and equipment to safely manage workplace hazards. Employees have the responsibility to conduct themselves in a safe manner according to the equipment and training they have received.

Hazard Assessment Principles Guide and Tools

This BMP for hazard assessment is designed to lead breweries towards the development of their own written safety programs and standard operating procedures (SOPs) related to a range of common occupational hazards within the brewing industry. It is not a regulation.

This BMP provides breweries, with limited safety program experience, a few conceptual tools, a starting pathway and sample forms and checklists, to guide their companies on a continuous safety journey in pursuit of workplace safety excellence and worker well-being.

This BMP is not a substitute for institutionalizing safety culture within your business or developing written safety programs, nor does it any way guarantee compliance with relevant health and safety standards.

The recommendations herein are based on the experiences and expertise of Brewers Association Safety Subcommittee members, contributing BA members, best practices utilized in trades with hazards similar to those found in breweries, and other resources found among the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), trade journals and from the experience of safety professionals.

The Brewers Association believes the recommendations in this BMP are appropriate and essential for protecting the health and safety of the craft beer industry’s hardworking, dedicated employees. Proper identification and management of workplace hazards in the brewery can prevent serious injury or death.