Farm chore uproar

This is a rush transcript from "The Five," April 26, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GREG GUTFELD, CO-HOST: So The Daily Caller reports the Department of Labor plans to apply child labor laws to youngsters on farms, keeping them from working in grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed stock, stockyards and livestock exchange and auctions, i.e., every place Bob has taken a date.

And while it's done in the name of safety, we know it's just another government intrusion into the lives of people who want to be alone, while also killing a chance to instill the value of hard work. But more important, how is it going to be enforced?

The only way -- empower the kids to rat on their parents. The administration thereby manages to raise another generation of snitches who will fink on anyone not towing the Obama line. As Soviets used to say, get them early.

Where will this overreach end? What about suburban chores like lawn mowing? And will unpaid interns also be saved from grunt work? If so, Dana will lose it, who would pre-chew her food to make sure there were no foreign objects? Who would iron her giant flag of Genghis Khan, who would work her cobra?

Look, work on the farm should be encouraged. It teaches discipline.

In fact, children should do more work. They should be used for heavy labor. Hook them to the sled and yell mush.

I, myself, pulled a backhoe for 13 years in rural Oklahoma. As you can see, it did me nothing but good.

And really, you got to wonder how many kids from farms ended up occupying Wall Street? Zero.

(LAUGHTER)

GUTFELD: Dana, you actually lived on not a farm but a ranch.

DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: Ranch.

GUTFELD: What's the difference?

PERINO: It's how much livestock you have, I believe. Maybe it's geographical thing.

GUTFELD: All right. So, when you lived on a ranch, you saw animals die, correct?

PERINO: Yes, but I saw them born, too. That's my cousin, Wade. Wade Preston (ph), please forgive me for showing pictures without asking permission. They live in New Castle, Wyoming. When they were little boys, they started working on the ranch.

And the only reason they were able to do what they do today, which is help my Uncle Matt run the ranch is because when they were little, they didn't go the Department of Labor regulations and safety checks. The parents took care of that. The uncle and the cousins and the neighbors took care of that.

And now, they help the ranch make sure we can buy a steak for 10 bucks down the street.

BOB BECKEL, CO-HOST: As a former owner of the grassy mountain ranch in Townsend, Montana, I can tell you --

GUTFELD: Now, that's a real ranch, Bob. That's not one of those ones in Nevada.

BECKEL: It was serious. It was 1,000-acre ranch that my partners sold off to become ranch, yes. But we had, it was a dude ranch. We ran cattle on it. We leased it for cattle, OK?

Now, taking cattle to livestock yards to transportation. You know, a lot of these states, in these farm states, have kids drive tractors and trucks and other things at age 14, 15 years old. Montana, I think the license requirement is 15 to drive.

GUTFELD: It's fun, though, Bob.

BECKEL: But wait a second, this is the thing we got to take in account. In that area, farming and ranching and transportation to stockyards, the largest number of injuries to children happen in those areas. There was almost 7,500 who were hurt in farm-related and ranch- related injuries. So --

GUTFELD: In a period of time.

BECKEL: Well, this is in 2010.

PERINO: But injuries of children on farms have gotten down over the last 10 years. Senator John Thune from South Dakota was on Greta last night and talked about that. Senator Barrasso of Wyoming, many other senators got together and said, this is -- the Department of Labor is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. And they are concerned about the government overreaching and the nose under the tent.

And what's next?

ANDREA TANTAROS, CO-HOST: Diners.

(CROSSTALK)

ERIC BOLLING, CO-HOST: Let me ask the right question. Where will this end? Do you know the White House Rural Council? Do you know what this is? The White House has put together council with heads of major departments, all the cabinets, the secretary of defense, secretary of homeland security, all of them for some reason -- social engineering, they want to make sure that the rural areas brought back into the urban areas. I don't know.

But this sounds like more social engineering. Tell farmers what they should do.

BECKEL: Seven thousand eight hundred injuries is not a small amount.

GUTFELD: But if it's decreasing, and a lot of it is recreational, it's not because they're working.

TANTAROS: I'm sorry, this is so stupid. The more this administration gets in lives of the people's businesses, the lazy -- first of all, the less prosperous the business becomes. The lazier the kids get. This is good to have kids working. OK?

I'm thankful they are not regulating diners because my childhood would have been different. But it's good to have a kid on the farm learning value of sweat equity, hard work. how to make a buck, getting up early.

GUTFELD: Get up in the dark and you can do anything.

TANTAROS: It makes me so mad.

BOLLING: As opposed to playing video games and listen to the iPhone.

BECKEL: Do you want a 15-year-old kid hauling a truck full of cattle?

TANTAROS: Yes. Why not? A lot of them can really do a good job.

(CROSSTALK)

PERINO: Bob, that's extreme. A lot of parents don't allow their kids to do that.

BECKEL: In Montana, they do.

TANTAROS: And what's the difference between the young person or some of these old farmers match. The majority of farmers are old. Are they next? They're going to go after them.

BECKEL: The majority of farms are owned by corporation.

PERINO: No, 4 percent. Ninety percent are owned by families.

Well, then, why does the Department of Labor get involved with these people? Leave them alone.

BECKEL: Because they're looking out --

TANTAROS: The parents will never rat them out either. The parents want the free labor. They're never going to rat them out.

GUTFELD: Can I point in the previous block, I said -- no one should vote before they're 25 and this block I'm saying that they should work hard labor. And there's no hypocrisy whatsoever involved in that.

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