A man who almost lost his arm in an incident at Tip Top Poultry Inc. in Rockmart on Tuesday afternoon will survive and likely recover the full use of his arm, according to a company official.

Brad Respess, chief operating officer of Tip Top Poultry, was at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on Wednesday with the worker and his family.

“The outlook is very good. We’re very pleased at the outcome,” Respess said.

The employee’s name has been withheld by the company, citing privacy concerns.

Respess said Emory doctors reattached the arm in a surgery Tuesday night. He said doctors have predicted a complete recovery with full use of his arm.

“He’s going to be a guy who can come back and work at Tip Top,” Respess said.

Respess said Wednesday he did not know how the incident occurred. It happened as the worker was finishing up his duties at the end of the shift Tuesday, he said.

“Somehow, this young man got his arm in a piece of equipment that runs like a conveyor. It moves chicken,” he said. “We have an investigation team going back and figuring out what happened so, going forward, it won’t happen again.”

Respess said the worker was hired April 2011 but had taken the mandatory safety courses required of all employees.

“We’ve got very extensive training. Every employee has to go through the safety training, so we have to go back and reconstruct how this happened,” Respess said.

He said the company would continue to be there for the family because every worker is like family at Tip Top. He also said the biggest concern, beyond the worker’s medical care, is preventing a future incident.