HAMILTON, Ont. – Maple Leaf Foods Inc. has been fined $120,000, plus the standard victim fine surcharge, for its involvement in an incident in which an employee was injured at the company’s Hannon, Ont. facility on March 23, 2016. That day, the worker was dumping deboned chicken into a processing hopper when a box holding some of the chicken collapsed and the meat became stuck inside the hopper, according to a court bulletin from the Ontario Ministry of Labour (MOL). The employee lowered the box and then tried to correct its positioning in the hopper, but the pallet holding the box slid down and injured the worker’s arm. The MOL investigated the incident and found that there had been no safeguards in place to protect the employee and that the chicken had not been moved in a safe way. In the Ontario Court of Justice in Hamilton, Maple Leaf later pleaded guilty to violating section 25(1)(c) of the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act, and Justice of the Peace Kelly Visser imposed the fine on Sept. 11 of this year.