By Tracy Fugere
Fargo, ND – This year is the 58th anniversary of National Farm Safety Week and the Farm Safety Just 4 Kids Program is encouraging all Americans to put special emphasis on farm safety.
This year's theme is "Kids are Number One in 2001."
The mission of Farm Safety 4 Just Kids is to promote a safe farm environmentto prevent health hazards, injuries, and fatalities to children and youth.
Penny Martin is the President of the North Dakota Valley Chapter of theprogram. She says the organization was started nationally by MarilynAdams, who lost her son in a farming accident. Martin says farmingaccidents continue to happen and the issue isn't discussed enough.
"It continues to happen so I don't think we talk about it enough. I know when I was at Big Iron (in Fargo) last week I had a lot of people stop and visit and we talked about the age appropriate guidelines for children. At what age they should be doing certain things and people just have a wide, a very wide idea of what ages should be for what. I don't think you can talk about it enough, I don't think it's something that's ever going to get old. I think we all love and want to protect our children and so I think we have a very good mission and hopefully we can just keep hearing that word and have people that keep helping us to continue doing this."
The program advises parents to take some precautions to prevent kids from getting hurt such as: identifying hazards, setting up appropriate rules, and supervising children according to age.
The program is a volunteer effort that's been active for ten years.
For more information about the Farm Safety 4 Just Kids Program, call1-800-423-5437 or visit their web site at www.fs4jk.org.