EAST WILLIAMSBURG — A worker severely mangled his hand in a food grinder at a kosher food factory, authorities said.
Emergency workers responded to a call for help from Flaum Appetizing at 288 Scholes St., purveyor of kosher pickles, herring, fish spreads and dips, on Friday just after noon, an FDNY spokesman said.
At 12:17 p.m., they rushed an injured worker in his fifties, with a severe injury to his hand to Elmhurst Hospital in serious condition, the spokesman said.
The man was stuffing fish into a grinder when it sucked in his hand, the Daily News reported.
The grinder was missing a "protector" when the machine kicked back, injuring the worker's left hand, according to court records. The amount of that settlement wasn't available immediately.
A spokesman for the Department of Labor's Occupational Health and Safety Administration, which oversees workplace safety, said they opened an inspection at Flaum Appetizing on Friday, but didn't comment further on the incident.
Before Friday, the last time OSHA inspected the facility was in 2007, according to online records. In that inspection, the company was fined $8,500 for 20 safety violations, 16 of them ranked as serious by the agency.
The citations included violating general protocol for safeguarding machines, and for failing to protect against unexpected "start up of the machines or equipment which could harm employees", according to OSHA records.
In 2012, Flaum Appetizing settled was forced to pay its workers $577,000 in unpaid wages to a group of former employees that had organized against owner Moshe Grunhut.
A worker at Flaum Appetizing, which boasts of bringing "the delightful taste of old-world tradition to every table," on their website, declined to comment.
