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Could this be happening in |
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Excerpts from
By Patrick Richardson, |
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[The excerpts below alert us to an unthinkable
threat to American families across the country — especially farmers. Pray that
farms and families remain free from these atrocious regulations. :
A proposal from the Obama administration to
prevent children from doing farm
chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members of Congress.
But now its attracting barbs from farm kids themselves.The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that
would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting
them from performing a list of jobs on their own families land.Under the rules,
children under 18 could no longer work in the storing,
marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.Prohibited places of employment, a Department press release read, would
include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards,
livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.The new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis,
would also revoke the governments approval of safety training and certification
taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a
90-hour federal government training course….The main concern I have is that it would prevent kids from doing 4-H and FFA
projects if theyre not at their parents house, said Blinson.I started showing sheep when I was four years old. I started with cattle around
8. Its been very important. I learned a lot of responsibility being a farm
kid.In Kansas, Cherokee County Farm Bureau
president Jeff Clark…. said if Soliss regulations are implemented,
farming families labor losses from their children will only be part of the
problem. “What would be more of a blow, he said, is not teaching our
kids the values of working on a farm.…John Weber, 19, understands this. The Minneapolis native grew up in suburbia and
learned the livestock business working summers on his relatives farm….I started working on my grandparents
and uncles farms for a couple of weeks in the summer when I was 12….I
started spending full summers there when I was 13.The work ethic is a huge part of it. It gave me a lot of direction and
opportunity in my life. If they do this it will prevent a lot of interest in
agriculture. Its harder to get a 16 year-old interested in farming than a 12
year old.Weber is also a small businessman. In high school, he said, he took out a loan
and bought a few steers to raise for income. Under these regulations, he
explained, I wouldnt be allowed to do that.…According to a United States Department of Agriculture study, farm accidents
among youth fell nearly 40 percent between 2001 and 2009, to 7.2 injuries per
1,000 farms….The way the regulations are currently written, he added,
would prohibit children under 16 from using battery powered screwdrivers……the animal provision would also mean young people
couldnt see veterinary medicine in practice including a veterinarians own
children accompanying him or her to a farm or ranch.…the new farming regulations could go into effect as
early as August. She claimed farmers could soon find The Labor Departments Wage
and Hour Division inspectors on their land, citing them for violations.