(Washington, DC) – The US House Small Business Subcommittee on Agriculture, Energy and Trade is holding a hearing on February 2, 2012, on proposed rules to prevent child farmworkers from taking on the most dangerous tasks. The new rules are intended to make paid farm work safer for the hundreds of thousands of children in the United States who labor in agriculture. They would not apply to children working on their parents’ farms.
“Sixteen children died at work in the US last year, and twelve of those were fatally injured while working on farms,” said Zama Coursen-Neff, deputy children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The rules need to change to ensure that the most dangerous farm jobs are done by adults, not children.”
