Obama's Labor Secretary to Prohibit Children From Working On Farms

A small grain elevator on a farm near Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Obama administration is in the process of finalizing a rule that would prohibit children from working on a farm, even on their own families’ land.

The Daily Caller's Patrick Richardson explains that 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 were proposed in August by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and would also revoke the government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them with a 90-hour federal government training course.

In Kansas, Cherokee County Farm Bureau president Jeff Clark said if these regulations are implemented, farming families’ labor losses from their children will only be part of the problem.

 “What would be more of a blow is not teaching our kids the values of working on a farm,” said Clark. “Losing that work-ethic — it’s so hard to pick this up later in life. There’s other ways to learn how to farm, but it’s so hard. You can learn so much more working on the farm when you’re 12, 13, 14 years old.”

Clark said the regulations are vague and meddlesome. “It’s so far-reaching, kids would be prohibited from working on anything ‘power take-off’ driven, and anything with a work-height over six feet — which would include the tractor I’m on now.”

Clark added that the way the regulations are currently written would prohibit children under 16 from using battery powered screwdrivers, since their motors, like those of a tractor, are defined as “power take-off driven.”

The federal government is clearly out of control. The central government's drive for power over its citizens is always conducted under the guise of protecting individuals from themselves, as was demonstrated by the original version of  The Food Safety Modernization Act.

If not for the Tester Amendment, this legislation would have forced small local farms and co-ops out of business, allowing the already consolidated control of our nation’s food supply among a small and powerful cabal, to become even more powerful.

The USDA recently confiscated a four-year-old girl's homemade lunch -- turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice -- because the school claimed her packed lunch did not meet USDA guidelines -- the same USDA that classifies tomato paste on pizza as a vegetable.