Introduction - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 13

safety programs with a blend of state and federal funding. The effort continued
until Congress eliminated the funding from its agricultural appropriations activity
in 2002 (Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002), thus spelling a near
total collapse of extension activity in agricultural safety and health.
While nearly all agricultural safety professionals were united behind the ban-
ner of more safety education for all exposed to agricultural and forestry risks
(fishing was not mentioned at this early stage), lone voices were calling for public
policy intervention (Plambeck, 1983). OSHA's regulatory activities were not only
controversial in agriculture and forestry but attracted an unusual array of critics
in a variety of other American worksite sectors (Stang, 1952; OSHA, 1974). As
enthusiasm for policy advocacy waned, educational approaches gained popularity;
however, the efficacy of such approaches was continually questioned, and targeting
the appropriate population proved to be elusive as unintentional injuries continued
to mount.
Independently of those activities, clinical interest in and response to the
mounting disease and injury toll were being documented. The Institute of Agri-
cultural Medicine and Occupational Health was established at the University of
Iowa in the 1950s, the National Farm Medicine Center of Wisconsin in the 1970s,
and the Farm Safety and Health Center at the Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in
Cooperstown, New York, in the 1980s. Clinical acumen was gathered to target
disease syndromes and acute and chronic injuries related to agricultural work.
Clinicians in Canada were hosting international symposia to highlight exposures
and results of selected interventions across the whole of North America and in se-
lected European and Asian countries, and Scandinavians in agricultural safety and
occupational health developed specific clinical “tracks” at European occupational
symposia (see, for example, Dosman and Cockcroft, 1989; Svanström et al., 1989).
By the mid-1980s, the CDC had awarded the first substantial resources for unin-
tentional injury surveillance in rural areas of the United States (Gerberich et al.,
1990). All those efforts added weight to the proposition that a national effort was
needed, at the very least, as a response to moral imperatives surrounding a decent
society and national security interests—security interests that suggested that a
safe and affordable food supply for the nation's growing population was essential
(Eken, 1991).
Several federal agencies other than NIOSH have contributed to AFF work-
related research, including the CDC's Injury Prevention Branch, USDA, the National
Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institute of Envi-
ronmental Health Services (NIEHS), and the National Center for Health Statistics
(NCHS). Fatal occupational injury surveillance efforts were provided by NIOSH,
the NCHS, and several state-level agricultural safety specialists funded by USDA
and state-level funding; occupational disease surveillance was conducted by NIOSH
and NCI; rural injury surveillance was done through the CDC; intentional death