Elderly Man Crushed to Death by Thousands of Wheels of Cheese

A man in Italy was reportedly crushed to death after a shelving collapse caused thousands of wheels of cheese to fall on him.

Owner Giacomo Chiapparini, said to be in his 70s, had been working at a cheese factory in Bergamo, just east of Milan, Italy, on Sunday evening when the collapse occurred.

An estimated 20 firefighters arrived at the factory before they were joined by others from neighboring areas, the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero reported. Firefighters managed to find Chiapparini's body on Monday morning following a search that lasted through the night.

Chiapparini had entered the factory in order to control a piece of machinery, the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported. Amid concerns that some of the shelves containing thousands of wheels of Grana Padano cheese had collapsed, employees outside the building raised the alarm and called firefighters. When Chipparini's body was found in the morning, he was located 40 feet away from the machine.

According to Eurostat, which monitors multiple statistics of European Union member states, Italy recorded 776 workplace fatalities in 2020. That year, there were 323,683 recorded workplace accidents across Italy which were lower than in Spain, France, and Germany. The number of men who suffered non-fatal accidents in 2020 was recorded as 187,579 and women suffered 136,104.

In comparison, in the United States which has a population nearly six times that of Italy, there were 5,190 fatal workplace injuries across all sectors in 2021.

The Chiapparini company has produced Grano Padano cheese since 2006, and an average of 15,000 wheels of cheese are made at the farm each year, according to Corriere Della Sera.

Chiapparini's daughter, Mary told the outlet: "We have always been milk producers. My father Giacomo, the last of 7 brothers, worked for years with his father and two brothers as a sharecropper before setting up on his own, earning, thanks to his work, the first farmhouse and some land.

"In 1977, he split from his brothers and with his share of 26 cattle, a tractor, an excavator, half a shed, and some land, he began his own adventure. He began to build the first barn and to sell the raw material to the big processing companies, Invernizzi, Kraft, managing to get the quality awards recognized."

Newsweek reached out to the Chiapparini farm via its Facebook page for comment.