Proposed regulations are bad for Pennsylvania farms, advocates assert

Farmers in Pennsylvania take exception to some proposed federal regulations that aim to prohibit children younger than 16 years of age from various tasks that are helpful to farms, The Associated Press reports.

Among those jobs are operating power machinery, assisting in silos and applying pesticides but the proposed regulations would not apply to children at their parents' farms but they would if those farms are incorporated. At least 4,000 remarks have been submitted to the U.S. Labor Department, which asserts the government must step in to address statistics indicating a child is killed on a farm every three-plus days.

But Larry Cogan, vice president of the farm bureau in Somerset County, told the Daily American of his resistance to the federal regulations enacted as law.

"It is very important that kids help; it goes back to the idea that they are family farms," he told the publication. "To have chores when you grow up on a farm is part of farm life. You learn by doing. Think of our conservative population - Amish and Mennonites - it is ingrained in them to work on the farm."

Also opposing the regulations are the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, the Pennsylvania State Grange and the Pennsylvania Association of Agricultural Educators.