The annual report from the Farm Safety Foundation, a charity, that looks into accidents in the agricultural industry, shows that 28 people have lost their lives on UK farms last year. Although this is fewer than previous years, there are still too many fatalities on farms, and the charity is highlighting there is still much to do this Farm Safety week Monday 21st– Friday 25th July.

A Newnham man can testify to the dangers that the agricultural industry poses.

54-year-old David Warner spent his life in the farming world until a fateful day that left him blind for the rest of his life.

His family have always been involved in the farming world, his grandparents bought cattle and sheep in the Marches borders, from Knighton to Ross on Wye’.

On his mother’s side they had champion Jersey show cattle, going to the Royal Show and the Bath and West, “In the 70s and the 80s, my grandparents were among the top breeders in the country.

“They were presidents of the Jersey Cattle Society and were big names in the show world”.

David started when he was 15 working with Jerseys and then worked all over the country milking cows until Foot and Mouth in 2001 when he worked on the roads but he missed his cows and the milking and took a job at the dairy unit at the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencestern and worked there eight years.

But when they sold the cows, he moved back to Ellmore, then Reading and finally ended up working on a beef and arable farm between junctions 17 to junction 20 around the M25.

It was while he was working at High Wickham on a 300 Jersey cow unit in 2016 that his life was turned upside-down.

He was asked to help a colleague with a sprayer used to wash the walls when one of the pipes burst and spurted chemicals into his eyas.

That chemical was Milkstone Remover, used in the dairy industry and was at “near full strength.

“I was in agony and raced to wash my eyes out.

I jumped in the shower and kept washing my eyes but nothing was working.”

He was taken to the hospital in High Wickham and was blue-lighted to Stoke Mandeville, the eye hospital in Buckinghamshire and then to Moorfields where he was told that his eyesight was lost.

“I can’t see my hand in front of my face, I can’t tell if its daylight or nightime, it makes no difference whatsoever.”

He spends his time working with charities Forest Sensory Services in Valley Road Cinderford, helping people working with different groups for blind and deaf services.

He also volunteers with Dean Heritage Centre at Sudley doing charity work around the Forest of Dean with people with vision impairment

“That day, my luck ran out”.

His advice to anyone working in the agricultural industry is “think, always plan what your doing, stop and think what you're doing at every stage and think about PPE.

“Your luck is not always going to be there”.