It appears that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will work to clarify its regulations regarding grain storage on small farms in light of language included in the Omnibus Appropriations Act recently passed by Congress.

The reason we had to once again reaffirm a law that dates back thirty-five years is because OSHA had misinterpreted it at the expense of family farmers.

Since 1976, Congress has exempted small, family-run farms from OSHA regulations. However, as the Obama Administration has done time and time again, it ignored Congress to impose its will on the American people by demanding compliance of Administration regulations that run counter to the spirit of the law.

In 2011, OSHA issued a memo that asserted on-farm grain storage and handling was not part of farm operations. The memo essentially expanded OSHA’s regulatory scope to nearly every farm in the country without going through the established rule making process that allows Congressional review and public comment. It is a mandate based on faulty logic written by bureaucrats who do not understand family farming in the slightest.

Late last year, I joined 41 of my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to demand OSHA immediately stop its unlawful targeting of family farms. My colleague, Senator Mike Johanns (R-NE), was the lead author of the letter to OSHA that called on the agency to cease and desist with such tactics. The letter we sent to the agency can be found here on his website.

OSHA’s announcement that it will revisit current policy is a good first step, but the agency must follow through and end these practices and it needs to rescind the fines it has levied based on a false interpretation of the law.

The Obama Administration has consistently gone around Congress to impose regulations that it knows it cannot pass legislatively. This regulatory overreach has to end. The President needs to listen to Congress and respect the will of the American people. Stopping this abuse of family farmers is a good place to start.