The End of Personal Responsibility.

[greygirlbeast]

This from The Providence Journal (Saturday, August 12, 2006):

The town of Milford, Conn., has announced that three beautiful towering hickory trees on a street are being chopped down, because one child in the area is allergic to hickory nuts. The town was driven by fear of litigation spawned by a letter from Una Glennon, a grandmother of the child

Comments

[krasota]

The key is contact/airborne. Peanut allergies are often incredibly severe, for reasons not well understood. The residue of PB is oily. It's very hard to scrub off with the cursory handwashing most children (and many adults) do. It's not an easily denatured protein, for whatever reasons. If a child doesn't have a contact allergy to peanut or a reaction to airborne vapors (which contain molecules of the allergenic protein), there's no reason to have a peanut ban.

Most food allergies don't have a contact/airborne aspect. In fact, inhalation reactions are incredibly rare. In those rare cases, it does make sense to have a ban, but the reaction history should be well documented. A food ban certainly isn't always appropriate, but there are rare cases where it just makes sense. And yes, there are logistical issues, cost issues, and all sorts of factors to consider, but in the end, the life of a child is more important than a food choice.

Strict avoidance of a food allergen early on can lead to the child outgrowing the allergy. This is probably yet another reason why more parents push for limits on peanuts in elementaries than in high school. Of course, older children are able to take more responsibility for their food choices. They're also more likely to take risks, so a ban wouldn't really be effective at that age.

[greygirlbeast]

the life of a child is more important than a food choice.

That's debatable.