FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, March 6, 2008

For more information contact:
Bill Clary

(502) 564-4696

FARM SAFETY SYMPOSIUM RETURNS MARCH 7

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Participants in the 2008 Farm Safety Symposium will look at the past, present and future of farm safety education and training in Kentucky.

The symposium will be March 7 at 7 p.m. at the Pritchard Community Center in Elizabethtown. Dale Dobson, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture’s Farm and Home Safety Program coordinator, will lead the program.

Dobson started a farm and home safety program in the early 1990s. The KDA hired Dobson and adopted the program in 1998. Since then the program has expanded to include lawn mower and all-terrain vehicle safety.

The Farm Safety Symposium is held in conjunction with the Dixie Fire School. Dobson will teach a 16-hour farm rescue course at the Dixie Fire School March 8-9.

Kentucky recorded 18 farming-related deaths in 2006, down from 21 in 2005, according to the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center in Lexington. In recent years Kentucky farm deaths peaked at 50 in 1995.

For more information on the Farm Safety Symposium or the Dixie Fire School, go to http://www.sfrtarea5.org/.

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