Wince of the Week, July 8-14, 2012
The EHRP Team winced–hard–when we read this in Jim Shur’s July 10 article for The Associated Press (AP):
As he watched his 10-year-old son ease a tractor across a soybean field, Dennis Mosbacher acknowledged the risks of farming.
But Mosbacher said the U.S. Labor Department was misguided in its attempts to protect children from farm accidents and he’s relieved the agency dropped its plans this spring and has promised not to take up the matter again.
“You can’t make a rule to stop every accident,” Mosbacher said after his son Jacob hopped off the 40-year-old, 60-horsepower tractor at their farm near the tiny southern Illinois town of Fults. “There’s always a risk in life, no matter what you do.”
[...]
The lack of action also troubles Cheryl Monen, who lives in the small northwestern Iowa community of Lester.
Had such child labor rules been in place a year ago, her 17-year-old son might still be alive.
Jordan Monen was into his second summer working on a cattle farm in July 2011 when he climbed into the bucket of a payloader and was hoisted up to fix the top railing on a cattle shed’s sliding door. The machine lunged forward and smashed the teen’s face between the railing and the back of the bucket. He then hit a cement feed trough as he tumbled to the ground.
– an excerpt from Jim Shur’s July 10 article for The Associated Press (AP), Parents defend putting children to work on farms.
