Bailey, Emily

How could this be acceptable to be passed? Do you realize how many of the kids in New York State learn all their life skills from working on a farm? Many more than you could ever count! More children from farm work are respectable, hold high honors and have more value and character than kids who sit inside a house with their face glued to the television killing a virtual person. Is this the route you want children to go? Learning to kill people on an electronic game? You complain that America's youth are obese, so let's take away a source of great exercise, clean area and life skill learning opportunities. Those children whom get hurt or killed on farm work were probably goofing around and not following the rules of the business. Rules the business has in place to prevent injury or death. Have you surveyed the farms that hire youth? The youth want to work, want to learn and want to be there! Not many people can find kids whom are dedicated to their work. I know that I would not allow my kids to work in any dirty cities or burger joints for minimum wage. You don't learn anything except "Would you like fries with that?" What life skills can be learned from those places? Who was the crazy, unintelligible person who proposed this? Most likely doesn't know what farm work is like. Farm work is one of the less dangerous jobs in the country. Yes, animals are unpredictable, but they show intelligence and people learn to understand them as a partner rather than a wild and crazy beast. Farm machinery accidents are caused by the operators because those are operator driven, because that is a machine, and not a Transformer! Pesticides and plant growing is a mostly harmless profession and in order to work with the pesticides, there are certifications and classes to go to before one can work with the crops. So in the end, to pass this would end the food supply to America, because this limits the availability of farms to the future youth who would otherwise be working in agriculture