¶ 01:17) Introduction
What level of OSHA is covering ag? You're getting into a challenging issue with OSHA. OSHA has a funding rider that means that they cannot spend federal funds. on any activity on and businesses of 10 or fewer employees so they cannot inspect or anything like that for many many many years
Ag operations were family farmed, family owned and operated. So they fell under that exemption, you know, but many dairy operations, they have well over 10, you know, 5,100, 300 workers. And so they're subject to OSHA. just because you're exempt from enforcement or let's say an expect inspection doesn't mean that you should not be in compliance with the standards right it just means that federal dollars can't be spent on any activity on the farm yeah Thank you.
Howdy, everybody, and welcome to Work Factor, sponsored by the Texas A&M Center for Worker Health. I am Adam Pickens. And I'm Martha Parker. And we are here today with our guest, Dr. David Dufresne. Thanks for having me. We appreciate you being here. You walked... All of, what, 150 feet maybe? It was my exercise. Okay. Nice. I like that. Dr. Dufresne is no longer our newest member of the department, right? I mean, we have newer people.
¶ 05:16) Journey Towards Texas A&M
No. No. I don't think so. No, I don't think we do. We have newer people in the center. We have newer people in the center, but not in the department. That's right. We have new faculty coming. Yes. Yes. This is the beauty of academia. You have these multi-level things going on where you're a member of something, but you're not a member of something else. Yep. So you're in the environmental and occupational health department. I am. And you are an associate professor. I am.
And when do you look to be promoted to full professor? Should be going up for that this year. Congratulations. Congratulations. That's a big deal. Well, plan on it. Doesn't mean it will happen, but that's the plan. So you. have come to A&M. You've had a long career prior to being here. So your background is in physical therapy, among other things, but your primary area of research is in dairy.
In agriculture. Agriculture, okay. More broad. Broader, okay. And not in agriculture, but the workers, right? Correct. Okay. So, see Martha ties it all together for us. Well done. So, if you would, kind of give us a background of... Some of the stuff you do. So my background is a little all over the place. I'm a native Texan, born, raised in Dallas, not on a farm. So I had to learn all this, all the ag thing through my research.
But I graduated from A&M way back when, 92, with a degree in kinesis with a plan of going into physical therapy. So I went on to physical therapy.
school at ut medical branch in galveston and then i started working clinically as a physical therapist in east texas and then also in central texas and clinically primarily i concentrated in sports medicine sports injury rehabilitation and a lot of occupational rehabilitation and um during that process during my clinical days i also received my mba which ties in to what I do with workplace health and safety because I can talk the...
the business sense or make the business sense for workplace health and safety and so then my wife and i took uh we had one child at the time we went up to colorado state university and that's where i received my phd at um ergonomics with an emphasis well with in environmental health with an emphasis in ergonomics and it was at colorado state with the university where i was introduced to agricultural health and safety they have one of at the time i think it was one of ten
NIOSH funded agricultural health and safety research centers, which our federal government funds through NIOSH.
national institute for occupational safety and health our federal government realizes that at the the agricultural industry and that includes logging and fishing as well it's notoriously the number one industry as it relates to workplace fatalities and injuries and they fund these research centers to address workplace health and safety in agricultural settings and that's where i was introduced to agricultural health and safety more specifically dairy farms
You know, being a city slicker from Dallas, I knew nothing about dairy operations, but that's where I was introduced to it. And quite honestly, you know, the dairies that I conduct research on. They're large businesses. They're mass production settings. You're dealing with thousands of cows. You know, the trend is. For, you know, dairies that are 2,000, 3,000 cows, those are becoming small dairies nowadays. I'm on farms that have anywhere from three to five, been on one with 10,000 cows.
With more cows, you have more workers, more opportunity for injury on those fatalities. And that's where I do most of my research. I started doing my research in the milking parlor.
¶ 08:10) Agriculture Providing Security
Which sounds very fancy. The milking parlor? The milking parlor. It's a throwback. Where the product is harvest. Which sounds worse than milking a cow. So, but yeah, these are, you know, bring you, when you have thousands of cows, you need workers to perform certain tasks on the cows too. um you know ultimately putting a machine on a cow and and getting the milk from the cow and so that involves uh high repetitions awkward postures uh muscle forces all of the
primary risk factors that we teach and we research in the field of ergonomics that can lead to the development of musculoskeletal disorders. And so it's not just injury prevention that I look at. I also look at efficiency. productivity. And these are businesses. They want to be profitable. They want to be efficient. They want to be productive. And so that's what I help them out with. These owners.
are outstanding owners and uh you know in my opinion they serve a vital need to our country um i like to to quote you know president bush he said one time that uh I think he was addressing the Future Farmers of America conference. And he said, basically, if a country cannot provide for itself, the foodstuffs for itself, it's a nation at risk. And so our ag industry provides a significant contribution to our nation's security. Not only do they provide nutritious food for...
our nation's population, but they provide globally. We export a lot of ag products globally. And so they rely on a lot of workers. A lot of the workers come here from other countries. And they are at increased risk for injury and illnesses and fatalities for a number of reasons. And so that's another passion of mine is trying to help those workers to not only have employment, but also.
to protect themselves on the job. Not die. Yeah. So you said a couple of things in there that really speaks to me because I'm an industrial engineer and I'm sure you perked up on some of these things as well. The productivity and the efficiency and whatnot. So to that end, I mean, we work in a lot of different fields. We have a lot of different folks. Automation is coming along whether we like it or not. And it's, you know, I know a lot of people don't like to.
throw that word around because then you're talking about people's livelihoods and whatnot and reduced workforce. What about in the dairy industry? What about in the ag? It's coming. It's coming? In ag in general, there's precision farming that they refer to. Not unlike precision ergonomics. No. And so, you know, robotic production is becoming a big deal.
¶ 11:11) Technology Efficiency for Milking
it is uh evolving in the dairy industry we have robotic milking systems in um in dairy um so there are you know we part of our research we compare different parlor configurations and Without getting into too much detail, cows are milked differently based on the structure that they're milked in, you know, the barn, the milking barn. So they had different milking barns. There's what they call a herringbone. There's one called a parallel, and there's one called a rotary.
We can picture all that. Yeah. So herringbone, the cows are angled a certain direction. Parallel, they're parallel to one another. And rotary is like a big merry-go-round. Cows come, they step on, and they go around. So that's really the first. robotic, I guess, example in the dairy industry. But now, in all of those situations, a worker still has to put a contraption on the udder of the cow.
The cow still needs to be prepped. She needs to be cleaned, prepped, stimulated to release a hormone that releases milk down to, and even that in and of itself improves efficiency.
Workers need to know the biology behind milking a cow. And so if they don't know that, the whole system slows down. And so the human element is still there, but now... there are robotic systems being introduced in milking to where eventually it'll all be robotic milking and so that that begs a question you know what does that mean for the worker well the worker
is going to have a different skill set. It's a different worker. It's a different worker. Not necessarily reduced workers. Yeah, so it may shift from a more physical, manual job responsibility to more technical. how to fix a system or a robotic system when it goes down so and then there you know as we know a lot of safety issues related to robotics as well and so a lot of water in milking parlors safety there you know electricity and water don't like one another um but it's coming along
Yeah. So, but I mean, workers, even that that's just inside the milking parlor on dairy farms. There are many other opportunities for injuries and fatalities. And unfortunately. agriculture and dairy specifically, we still have dairy fatalities for a number of reasons. And so my research and outreach is not only in the parlor, but outside the parlor as well. But, I mean, there's robotic feeders that take the feed to the cows.
And it's coming. The technology is evolving, and it's evolving in an accelerated fashion. The first time I saw a robotic feeder, have you ever seen one? I think so, yeah. It's really cool. I saw one in Feedlot in Plainview.
¶ 13:36) Maximizing Product
And as it just runs up and down, I thought, golly, why haven't we done this sooner? It was really good. You just wanted one for your kitchen table. I kind of did. Yeah, you did. And so it's, I mean, the general public don't understand. They think milk just magically appears on the... shelf. And thank goodness we have brown cows. Yes. So don't get me going on almond and soy. That's not milk. But. Cows based on where they are in life and whether they...
They just had a calf or coming off having a calf. Their nutritional needs are different. Dairy cows are like racehorses. They produce the product. And dairy owners take very good care of these cows and they feed them, you know, Olympic, you know, feeds and diets. You get what you put in. Yeah. So each pin of... of cows on a dairy they represent a group of cows that are in the same stage of life right and all of those cows in that pen have a different diet and so that robotic feeding
Everything is different. The components of that feed is different. And so there's a, you know. I kind of refer to it as like a barbecue recipe, barbecue sauce recipe. Every dairy owner likes certain things in there because they, through experience, they know that this is best for their cows and it maximizes milk output. climate, more protein, more fat. Exactly. Well, no pun intended with the barbecue.
It's the old adage from any barbecue chef. I can tell you, but I'd have to kill you. There it is. So before we go any further, I just want to let our audience know that you have an opportunity to have one of the fine ergonomists from our center come and do a... professional office ergo eval for you. Be sure and click the link down below in the description. That will take you to the webpage to fill out your information. Submit it and you'll be in a drawing. It's a drawing? Yep.
Yeah. And a drawing for us to select you and come to a professional officer go eval for you. Also, be sure to like, subscribe and share. And we'll get back to Dr. Dufresne. So real quick, this is so I.
¶ 19:55) Agriculture Research and Innovative Changes
As you were talking, I'm sure Martha did too, but I had a million questions. I wanted to talk about the change in the workers' responsibilities, where they come from, I'm sure. You know, they're not coming with college education in technical fields. But before we get to that, what's the craziest thing you've seen? The craziest thing, I wouldn't call it crazy. I would call it impressive. Okay. We'll go with that. Impressive? That works.
You know, we teach, we talk about systems. A large dairy farm is a massive system that everything has to work in, like... It has to work together. It's a well-oiled machine. It is a well-oiled machine. And I am so impressed with dairy owners. A lot of dairy owners, they're maybe the second, third generation in the family, fourth generation now.
And how they have fine-tuned that system, what works for them. And it is so impressive from a business perspective, from a biology perspective, because you're dealing with animals, large, large animals. You're dealing with people. who play a very influential and instrumental role in this. Everything has to go right. And, you know, and every every dairy owner, you know, if they I've got a colleague that often says, you know, if we show up on a farm and.
and a dairy owner's having a bad day, and they've already put out five fires. I mean, not a real fire, but issues. They're having a good day. I mean, there is always an issue. that's going on in this farm and for these producers to, to keep the business going in a very hard market where it is very difficult to. you know, make a profit. I figure your margins are pretty tight. Very low profit margins. And so it behooves the owner to be very efficient with their operations. Behooves.
And so you like that? So probably couldn't even spell that. So, but they have to be efficient and work with minimal, you know, inputs, but then maintain quality. I mean, we're here talking about health and safety of a worker. You know, with what we do, those workers have a huge impact on the health and safety of the cow.
How they milk the cow, how they prep the cow. I mean, because she can develop disease. They can develop mastitis. Cow develops mastitis. She has to be taken out of the milk supply. Her milk is taken out because she's being treated. Well, that's money. you know, lost. And so, and dairy owners, they take very good care of their cows. I mean, they want the best for them. They take it very seriously.
You know, to make sure that their cows are taken care of. It's an investment in the business. It's an investment. And so when they have to pull a cow out of that milk. Through change of profession to another area of that. Another opportunity. To the beef industry. That's lost investment. Right. And so, you know, that's the most impressive thing, that these dairy owners, that they choose to remain in a very challenging market, and they love it.
And they continue to do it. I mean, the dairy owners and workers that I work with, you know, those are really the reasons why I choose to go back to, you know, and help the dairy industry. They're just great people. Well, you spend a lot of time in the field. So, I mean, you get to know them all pretty well. No pun intended. But yeah, we spend a lot of time. The research that I do is a lot of direct measurement, meaning we put sensors on workers. We do a lot of observation.
We do a lot of survey work, talk a lot with dairy owners, and we talk a lot and collect data from dairy workers. And so... With what we do, as you all know, doing research in occupational health, places of business are not designed to be research labs. They're places of business. So we have an extra hurdle. of getting access to those workers to conduct research and that's hard.
Because everybody's got to answer the question, what's in it for me? What's in it for me? So you got to do it for the workers. What's in it for them? You got to do it for the owners. What's in it for them? You got to do it for you. We know what's in it for you. You're getting. you know, research and hopefully. Well, research, the results, hopefully they will. Well, I do it for them. I mean, but I mean, I'm just in a system that that's how we do things. He's nice too. But, you know, I would.
My research and what I do would not exist unless they existed. That's right. These businesses existed. And it is a high need industry. Ag is dangerous. Ag logging. I've done logging research. It's dangerous. That's a whole other scale. That's a whole other scale. Fishing. I've been involved in fishing projects. That is another whole other. I mean, it is dangerous work and people die. Yeah. And.
You know, if there's a purpose to what I do, hopefully some of the research findings that we come up with will lead to, you know, a saved life. And so, but yeah, these owners. You know, it requires for us to establish partnerships. Trust is huge. And I will not, you know, whenever I go on a dairy farm or any other place of business, I make sure that.
you know, I established that trust and they know that I'm not going to, what I'm doing is for their, for them and for their workers and for their business. And so. I've got a lot of relationships with many dairy owners and dairy associations in many states across the country. And they call me with issues. Unfortunately, they call me. When fatalities take place, hey, OSHA's out, what do I do? I go and speak to their association conferences. And so, I don't know, maybe that's a...
You know, it's a testament to, you know, years of working in the industry and I've established that trust with them. And so I take it very seriously. What level of OSHA is covering ag? Well, what do you mean what level?
¶ 21:44) Federal Funding and OSHA
Like 1910 covers general industry. So you're getting into a challenging issue with OSHA. Okay. OSHA has a funding writer. That means that they cannot spend federal funds on any activity on businesses of 10 or fewer employees. So they cannot inspect or anything like that. For many, many, many years. Ag operations were family farmed, family owned and operated. So they fell under that exemption. And so meaning OSHA could not go out and do their thing on these operations.
And that has created, you know, and that mindset has been passed down, you know, but many dairy operations, they have well over 10, you know, 5,100, 300 workers. And so they're subject to OSHA. But... You know, as many dairies have passed down through the generations within the family, they have that mindset that, oh, well, we're immune from OSHA. And that's not necessarily the case, especially if you have 11 or more workers.
But even still, if you had 10 or fewer workers, just because you're exempt from enforcement or let's say an inspection doesn't mean that you should not be. compliance with the standards it just means that federal dollars can't be spent on
And they don't have a lot of money. And so they're not going to. No. So, you know, they'll go out, you know, in a fatality and they'll inspect and they'll do, you know, the OSHA thing and they'll write the report and, you know, owners, they'll do what needs to be done.
you know, to make the changes. And so. So it sounds like you got a lot of opportunities. If a student wanted to get involved, how would you welcome a student into the mix? Send me an email or call me. There you go. I want my cell phone number.
¶ 24:50) importance of Relationships
It's sometimes just that simple, y'all. I am heavily dependent on student participation in going out and helping. I don't speak Spanish. And so that has always been a challenge for me as a researcher, you know, on farms. And so I welcome students to come in, especially those who speak Spanish, who can help, you know, communicate with workers on the farm.
Another challenge that we're seeing in agriculture, dairies in particular, especially in the Southwest, you know, workers are, you know, historically workers have come in from Mexico and they work on dairy farms. Now we're starting to see workers from Central America. And those workers from Central America speak other languages. They're not speaking Spanish, per se. You know, Kiche being one of them.
And we, this became a real issue about, you know, in our activities about six years ago, five, six years ago. And we were, you know, in Kiche up until recently, wasn't even a written language, a written alphabet. So how do we, how do we put. educational training materials, and how do we present it to them in a way that they understand? How do we assess whether they get it, if they learn something?
You know, that's, you know, I'm an exposure scientist. I, you know, but a lot of what I do is training and that's a whole other world of research, training effectiveness, how to, you know. How do we present information to them in a manner that they understand and that they can apply it on the job and they feel like, oh, the business is investing in me. I'm trying to, they're helping me do my job better.
I can protect myself and protect others on the job. I mean, it's useful. It's got to be useful to them. Yeah. And so I've got a story. So we've done, I've received funding from OSHA to develop training materials on dairy farms. And, you know, we'd give them a certificate of completion of the training. And we did this in, you know, the Southwest, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado. And I was in North or South Dakota. I can't remember.
Went on to a dairy farm up there. I don't know if I've told you a good story. I don't think so. Okay. So many stories. I walk in and a dairy worker recognizes me. And he just, you know, of course I don't speak Spanish. He said, you know, wait. And so I was like, okay, what's going on here? He goes to his locker and he pulls out one of those certificates that he received in New Mexico or Texas that we provided to him. So he.
you know moved from the southwest up and he was working on a dairy farm up there in the um frozen tundra yeah north of south dakota and so so that was kind of cool um just seeing it's like wow that's And that was multiple years before we had been up there. Well, that's great. I just wanted to remind everybody, if you go down below this video and you look, there's a link to connect with the center and go to our LinkedIn page. We'd love to be friends with you on there.
What's next? You can't just keep doing the same thing over and over again. I've been very successful in dairy. As long as the industry welcomes what...
¶ 28:10) Opportunities for Growth and Learning
I do. I'll continue to help the industry in that regard. So it's not just dairy only, you know, anything in agriculture, anything dealing with workers who. you know, are in these high risk jobs. And so that's my focus research wise. You know, I've done work in, like I said, in logging and in fishing and, but yeah, in, you know, being a physical therapist and.
Working in hospitals, I would love to get into the hospital healthcare sector. Healthcare is notorious for, you know, healthcare workers in hospitals. They're notorious for injuries. Oh, yeah. One of our newest center directors. focuses on healthcare workers. We're going to talk to him later. Oh, excellent. Okay. Excellent. Yeah. So yeah, I've got a student looking at nursing burnout in relation.
chips to musculoskeletal disorders. And so, you know, I've had my, you know, I'm six, five bumping my head on TVs back in the day when TVs were hanging off the walls. And so, and. you know just lifting patients um you know patient handling issues we i mean we know all those issues and it continues to be Yeah. And, you know, it's just like an egg, people continue to die. And so we have our work cut out for us. There's still a need and we need to do, we need to up our game.
And so whatever that is, we need to up our game to help these businesses be successful while protecting their workers. I got a question. Go ahead. So we're out of nowhere. Lab-grown meat. Will there ever be lab-grown dairy?
You're asking the wrong person. I don't know. I mean, what do you think? We've got the largest college of agriculture right across the parking lot. I'm not saying it'd be good for A&M. I'm just saying. You've never heard of lab-grown meat? No. Oh, yeah. They grow meat in a Petri dish. Using cells from the cow. And they say it tastes and the texture and everything is just like regular beef. I'm suspect.
Of course you would be. That's my nature. I'm not surprised. That's 100%. I'm not going there. But I'm just thinking like lab-grown dairy. I'm trying to like, I'm thinking all through the things. So there's so many other dairy products. Because there's soy and nuts and all that. So you can't milk a nut. You can't milk an almond. So it's fine. So there's lots of opportunities. prospective students.
You know, we've got a great website that is for our center, but we've also got one that is for our department. And so if students really want to kind of see more of what you do, I'm assuming. that your your data and information is updated on the website and if not
There's at least a contact information. Somebody will help me do that. Yeah, there you go. I believe it is. So you can go to the Texas A&M School of Public Health Environmental and Occupational Health Department and go under faculty, and then you will find Dr. David Dufresne's information right there. So one of my dreams is to take a bus, take a trip, take a road trip with students, do a mobile classroom.
¶ 32:05) Real Word Experiences Available for Students
And because a majority of our students here, they don't know where our food comes from. Kind of like a magic dairy bus. It's a, you know, HEB is this magic, you know, things just appear on the shelves. And so, you know, we've. You know, a faculty that's coming on board with us starting March 1st, we've had a dream of taking students to teach on the bus, drive out to West Texas, take them to a meat processing plant, take them to a cheese factory.
Take them to a feedlot. Take them to large dairy production and let them see where our food comes from. And it's not just about animals and the crops. It's about people too. And so I think that they would have a greater appreciation for that process, that food chain, you know, where it comes from. And there are huge public health needs.
I totally agree. I think this is a real, very much a public health issue because we consume and consume and consume. So if we want sponsors to help sponsor. So that's also a call to action. If you would like to sponsor a. Yeah. An ag bus. An ag bus. An ag worker bus. We've already lined up, you know, instructors and everything. You know, it's an eight hour drive from here out to West Texas. There's a lot of time for lecturing on that bus. That's right. Put them in a hotel and take them.
to different places and they get course credit for it. And so, yeah, there's a lot of things. Students need to be exposed to the real world. And that's one opportunity. That's very much the real world. And that is also what we do in the center is real world stuff. Very much. I mean, we do every every faculty member that does research has to do some theory. But in reality, I mean, in this center in particular.
we do real world stuff we get outside the walls of academia i would say as much if not more than everybody else not to jump all the way back to the very beginning but uh i made the joke about the brown cow i mean i think everybody's heard this Are we going to do a pitch? No, so my wife, I got my PhD in Lubbock. I went to Texas Tech. That school out there. Yeah, that school out there, which, again, they were very great to me, and I love Lubbock to this day. Sure.
But my wife's an elementary school teacher. And so they had in their school, they had farmers and ranchers come from time to time to kind of show the kids what the food scape was, so to speak. And one of the farmers brings dairy cattle up and he has a Holstein, which is black and white for those of our audience who are unaware. And then he has a Jersey, which is kind of a tannish color. And the farmer asked, and I believe it was second grade at the time.
says you know where's milk come from and so they talked about the cow and the anatomy and all this stuff and then he says well where's chocolate milk come from one of the kids raises his hand and my wife's standing there she can corroborate this but like points at it and says, the brown cow. It's become this joke that's just kind of out there in the ether at this point. But it's real. I'd like to know where strawberry milk comes from.
I have yet to see a pink cow. I have not either. It's a good question. So you know that the milk content is different from a Holstein versus brown, Swiss, or Jersey. So the smaller the cow, like... brown swiss or swiss or jersey less milk output for milking but higher fat content yeah so a lot of that milk goes to ice cream right butter and those are the cows that are in brenham
Or around Brenham for Bluebell. True. Yeah. And then the Holstein have less fat content in the milk, but they put out more milk. They go to make 2%. Yeah. Well, Dr. Dufresne, we certainly appreciate you being here. One last call to action.
¶ 32:41) Outro
you're interested in what we're doing if you're interested in what dr dufreight's doing please be sure and click the link below connect with us on linkedin we have lots of opportunities very active linkedin page i know martha make sure that we have really great content out there all right thank you so much i appreciate it you bet thank you both Thank you.