Child labor law change -- safety or 'insanity?'

(Courtesy of National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health)

I was a farm kid, of sorts.

I helped my dad fix fence, herd cattle and put up hay on our small Iowa acreage. I didn’t think twice about it – and certainly didn’t question the idea of chores.

That was the 1970s, the last time any federal regulations were set on child farm workers.

Now, the U.S. Department of Labor has proposed new rules that would bar kids under 16-years-old from doing dangerous jobs on the farm.

Seems obvious, right? Well, not so much.

In a move the Wall Street Journal called “a political minefield,” the revision to the Fair Labor Standards Act would bar children under 16 from cultivating tobacco and operating power-driven equipment. Yes, that means tractors, four-wheelers and other vehicles commonly used every day on the farm. (The tobacco provision is aimed at preventing exposure to high levels of nicotine, called “green tobacco sickness.”)

While child safety advocates applauded the proposed changes as long overdue, ag interest groups have denounced the move as placing onerous restrictions on an old way of life. The Michigan Farm Bureau said it “discourages the development of the work ethic.”

What do you think?

The Harvest Network is seeking your contribution to the debate. Should farm kids and their parents be left alone to do what they’ve always done? Or are these regulations needed to protect children in one of the most dangerous places to work?

Click here to send us your thoughts.

So far, our friends on our Facebook page suggest the changes are “insanity.” Caleb T. Pollard worried that the move would “throw 4-H out the window.”

“I was 10 and had feeder hogs and breeding heifers - I had fed them, groomed them and also worked them for show,” he wrote. “Kids on the farm learning farming by doing it. Farming IS dangerous, but so is commuting in cities.”

The Labor Department is seeking public comment on the regulations until Nov. 1.

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