Rolnicze choroby zawodowe i parazawodowe
Agricultural occupational and para-occupational diseases

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with the scope of legal protection of farmers and other persons covered by social insurance under the Act of 20 December 1990 on social insurance of farmers, victims of occupational and para-occupational agricultural diseases. The concept of agricultural occupational disease has been formed according to restrictive method of the list of occupational diseases, additionally enhanced by the definition of causes justifying the adoption of occupational nature of this disease. This significantly limits the scope of legal protection afforded to farmers affected by agricultural occupational diseases. Therefore, with a view to the future law, the adoption of an open concept of agricultural occupational disease and the departure from the method of exhaustive list of occupational diseases should be proposed. In the event of open formation of occupational disease with the aid of mixed method the basis of compensation should be the extended list of occupational diseases using the presumption of a causal relationship between occupational exposure and the onset of occupational disease. This would permit to include into the range of concepts of agricultural diseases a significant part of the so-called para-occupational agricultural diseases, which currently do not have the status of occupational diseases and are not covered by legal protection of the farmers' social insurance system. Polish legislators should also take appropriate measures for inclusion in the national list of occupational diseases those illnesses which are placed on the special list for agriculture and horticulture adopted by the European Union. At present, individuals employed in agriculture are in this case discriminated against because some farmers’ occupational diseases are not included in the current list of occupational diseases, created primarily for employees.

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