Today, U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) confirmed with Acting U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Seth Harris that the Obama Administration will not reintroduce farm labor rules originally proposed in April 2012. Acting Secretary Harris made it clear that the farm labor rules will not be proposed again during the remainder of the Obama Administration.

Sen. Moran had serious concerns about the previously proposed rules which would have disrupted the education of the next generation of farmers and ranchers. The DOL proposed doing away with successful farm safety training and certification programs like cooperative extension, 4-H and FFA. These organizations play a critical role in training and certifying young people to safely carry out farm activities. The Department ignored research that shows such programs improve safety habits of young people and instead criticized these training programs for being too locally driven and lacking federal direction. Agriculture is regionally diverse, but DOL proposed subjecting farmers and ranchers to a national standard that would have weakened these important training programs.

Additionally, the DOL recommended rules that would have resulted in children being unable to perform common farm tasks like rounding up cattle on horseback, operating a tractor, or cleaning out stalls with a shovel and wheelbarrow.

In October 2011, Sen. Moran requested a 60-day extension of the comment period on the proposed rules because the original comment period fell during the fall harvest season. After fully reviewing the proposed rules, Sen. Moran led 29 of his colleagues in requesting that former DOL Secretary Hilda Solis withdraw them. The senator also provided Kansans with an opportunity to share their stories about the value of working on a farm through the Keep Families Farming initiative, and invited Secretary Solis to Kansas so she could personally see how the proposed rules threaten the future of farming and ranching.