The grisly incident occurred around 5:30am. Police initially were reluctant to release the name of the sausage factory or its exact location before the man's relatives could be notified.
"Three persons were working near the meat grinder when one of them either fell or was sucked into the meat grinder," said Stig Øvrebø, spokesman for the Oslo Police District.
"We don't know the exact reason for the accident, but there may have been a vacuum effect from the machinery," Øvrebø told news bureau NTB.
Circumstances of the incident at the Åkeberg Skoglunn sausage factory in Oslo's Ensjø district remained unclear by midday. Øvrebø said that two of the three working with the meat grinder had left the area on an errand. When they returned, their colleague had disappeared until they found him in the grinder.
"The three colleagues work with large pieces of meat that are dropped down into the large grinder," Øvrebø told newspaper Aftenposten.. "There's no indication that the factory hadn't secured the grinder properly."
He said the victim's colleagues would be questioned as soon as they were able to speak about the horrifying incident. They were taken to a local emergency medical clinic, apparently suffering from shock.
Norwegian officials dealing with workplace safety issues were being called in to investigate along with the police.
