Harvest FreshCuts, a Queensland-based manufacturer of packaged salads, was fined $40,000 after a worker had two fingers removed by a vegetable slicer.
Perth Magistrates Court found that Harvest failed to ensure a safe workplace, with the company fined and ordered to pay $12,000 in costs.
A broken emergency stop button was to blame, WorkSafe found, with the worker putting his hand into a cutting chamber after he believed that the machine was deactivated.
"As a result, the blades were still spinning when he put his hand in," The West Australian reports WorkSafe as saying.
Executive acting director at WorkSafe, Ian Munns, said that the case highlighted how important lock-out and tagging procedures in such environments were.
“It's never safe to leave any piece of machinery operational while doing repairs or performing maintenance, and this case illustrates that effective lockout and tagging procedures are vitally important in any workplace where machinery is used,” he told AAP.