Abstract

Few studies in the South American context, and none in Chile, have been carried out in bovine slaughterhouse workers. However, the little evidence available mainly in North America and Europe is consistent with our findings, regarding the demands at the lumbar level, upper limbs and physical workload and the determinants of work activity. Objectives: Identify and describe the risk factors for WMSDs associated with Manual Handling of meat products, as well as other risk, the demand for physical work and biomechanical load, in truck loading and unloading activities in a slaughterhouse company and the determinants of work activity for the intervention. Material and Methods: Case study, observational descriptive cross-sectional design with mixed approach, considers the analysis of lumbar force moment, kinematic analysis and measurement of cardic frequency to determine the physiological workload, verbalizations, perceptions and observation of work activity Results: The Manual Handling of meat products exceeds 3400N of disc compression in L4-L5 and L5-S1 level, the % HRR is over 40% and the activity is determined by the type of working day, the organization of the distribution and the lack of means support mechanics for loading and unloading trucks. Conclusions. Manual Handling tasks in this industry are physically very demanding and improving these working conditions represents a major challenge for prevention and ergonomics.