Cite as: 517 U. S. 392 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
§§ 780.137 et seq. [explaining that work must be performed in connection with the farmer-employer's own farming to qualify as 'secondary' agriculture by a farmer] and Johnston v. Cotton Producers Assn., 244 F. 2d 553)." 29 CFR § 780.126 (1995).
This regulation suggests that live-haul crews surely are not engaged in a primary farming operation. The crews could rank as workers engaged in "secondary" agriculture if they "perform[ed] work on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with the raising of poultry on the farm." Ibid. As we developed earlier, however, see supra, at 402-405, in the Board's judgment, the crews do not fit that bill. The live-haul crew members perform their work, as the Board sees it, not "as an incident to" poultry raising by independent growers, but "incident to" and "in conjunction with" the slaughter and processing of chickens at Holly Farms' Wilkes-boro plant. In the Board's words, the crews are tied to "a separate and distinct business activity," the business of processing poultry for retail sale, see Imco Poultry, 202 N. L. R. B., at 261, not to the anterior work of agriculture.13
Other Department of Labor regulations are in harmony with the Board's conclusion that the live-haul crews do not engage in secondary farming because their work, though "on
13 The Department of Labor's interpretative regulation, 29 CFR § 780.126 (1995), includes a citation to Johnston v. Cotton Producers Assn., 244 F. 2d, 553, 554 (CA5 1957). That case is readily distinguishable from the case before us. In Johnston, the Court of Appeals held that an employee of a rural farm supply store was exempt from FLSA minimum wage and overtime requirements as an agricultural laborer. The supply store sold baby chicks to farmers, while "retain[ing] title to the chicks as security for the purchase price and for advances for feed, supplies, or equipment." Ibid. While the supply store employee caught, cooped, and loaded chickens onto trucks for delivery to processors—entities independent of the supply store—that employee also "supervise[d] the growing of chicks by [independent] growers on their farms." Ibid. By contrast, in this case there is no contention that any of the live-haul employees similarly assist the independent growers in their chick-raising activities.
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