New government laws could go into effect that would prevent children from having to do chores on farms. The children in rural families are often needed to keep farms running and it requires them to put in a lot of manual labor. Because it’s technically not a paying job in most cases, there have been no government mandates stating how much labor a child can put in per day. Read more about the proposed regulations below.

Julie1205

New Department of Labor regulations on farm work are garnering outrage from many. The rules would limit the activity of children on America’s farms and prevent those under 18 from working in silos, stockyards, etc.

Political Consultant Mark Hannah and Republican Political Analyst Tony Sayegh got into a heated debate about the issue on America Live.

Hannah argued that the regulations will protect children from the abuses of corporate agriculture. Sayegh disagrees and believes that this regulation “tries to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.”Sayegh continued, “At the end of the day, when you look at the statistics, there’s only seven injuries per thousand farms in America among kids today … Kids have a better chance of getting hurt on an athletic field playing organized sports than they do on a farm.”

Hannah countered that American farms are no longer the idyllic, pastoral farms we imagine but they are now corporate-owned and employ thousands of people. He argued, “It’s not like, you know, your kid or grandkid is out there working on the farm after school … Kids are able to work up to 12 hours, 13 hours – there’s not limitation on how long they can work on a farm. And a lot of these kids are the kids of migrant laborers, not the farm owners themselves.”
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