The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) awarded 109 diary company operations with IDFA Diary Industry Safety Recognition Awards and Achievement Certificates. The awards, now in their 12th year, highlight outstanding worker safety records of US dairy companies and were announced last week as part of the International Dairy Show in Chicago.

“We are happy to recognize those in the dairy industry who make workplace safety a top-to-bottom priority in all of their operations,” said Emily Lyons, director of regulatory affairs and counsel at IDFA. “These ongoing efforts set the high standard of how our industry operates, and we want to celebrate the increasing amount of winning companies this year.”

The award program includes categories for both processing facilities and trucking operations in the dairy industry. In addition to the 34 plant safety category award winners, IDFA awarded Achievement Certificates to 26 processing operations for having no injury cases that resulted in lost time away from work. IDFA also recognized 49 trucking operations for having a Zero DART rate – zero cases with days away from work, restriction or job transfer in 2014.

Processing facilities were judged in four product categories: natural and processed cheese; dry, condensed and evaporated products; ice cream and frozen desserts; and fluid milk. Within each product category, IDFA accepted nominations for small, medium and large facilities that achieved the best overall safety performance rates based on the OSHA data.

 The full list of 2015 winners can be found on the IDFA website here.