Children's Act for Responsible Employment (CARE Act) is a United States bill that would address the labor conditions of child field workers by imposing the same age, work hour, and pesticide exposure limits as other occupations and increasing the penalties for child labor violations.
Children are in up to three times greater danger of exposure to pesticides than adults due to their size and stage of biological development.
Although agriculture is among the top hazardous occupations for kids, no official statistics are maintained to monitor the depth of serious accidents stemming from child labor.
While on Capitol Hill, Longoria and Romano showed scenes from the feature-length documentary The Harvest to illustrate the harsh working conditions and exploitation of children in the fields.
The purpose of the documentary is to bring awareness of the harsh working conditions which tens of thousands of children face in the fields of the United States each year and to enact the Children's Act for Responsible Employment (CARE Act, HR 3564) which will bring parity of labor conditions to field workers that are afforded to minors in other occupations.
[7] On the one-year anniversary of the Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard's introduction of the CARE Act legislation in September 2009, Eva Longoria and film director U. Roberto Romano visited Capitol Hill to continue to bring awareness of the bill and the plight of minor children working in the fields.