Posted on 06/15/2004 8:21:01 AM PDT by Sabertooth
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack ...
This familiar line from the baseball anthem "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" doesn't have the same happy meaning for Timothy Haverkamp that it does for most fans.
Timothy, a first-grader from Ada Elementary, is allergic to peanuts.
"He was allergic to everything when he was little. His brother is allergic to peanuts, too," Jane Haverkamp, Timothy's mother, said. "He never had a life-threatening emergency with peanuts, but we don't keep any at home."
Timothy attended Wednesday's West Michigan Whitecaps game without fear of an attack. The team hosted its second "Peanut Free" day during an 11 a.m. game at Fifth Third Ballpark against the Fort Wayne Wizards.
The game was also the Whitecaps' third School Days promotion of the year, with groups of schoolchildren in attendance.
All peanut products -- from Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to chopped peanuts for ice cream -- were pulled from concession stands, and the stands received a special cleaning Tuesday night.
" We remove any peanuts from the stand or any product with peanut or peanut oil and take it off site. We pressure wash where the peanut roaster was and was," concessions manager Matt Timon said. "We get rid of everything contaminated by peanuts and take get rid of it for the day.
"The vendors are real supportive of it and help us out with it. They were fine with pulling their product for the entire day. They weren't concerned with the lost sales. Pulling candy bars on kids day is a tough thing to do. There is some loss, but it's worth it to get the kids with allergies in the game."
According to the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, more than three million Americans suffer from a peanut allergy. Even the smallest particle of peanut can trigger a reaction. Some reactions include hives or slow breathing, but some can be life threatening.
"It is nice to know that we don't even have to worry about it today," Jane Haverkamp said.
The "Peanut Free" day was started last year when Rebecca Andrusiak, a parent from Ada Elementary, contacted the Whitecaps. She told the team that because of her son's allergy, he would not be able to attend the School Days game with his classmates unless peanuts were removed from the stadium.
Whitecaps officials consulted the most knowledgeable sources they could find about how to make the stadium a no-peanut zone.
"We talked to parents of kids that already have the allergies," Timon said. "They're all really familiar since they have been dealing with it their whole lives, and told us what we needed."
I think it was nice there was a peanut-free day at the ball park, as long as it's not forever. Some folks make their income by throwing those bags of peanuts, for goodness sakes.
Smart woman.
I would never do such a heinous thing! Then I'd have to post the daily threads, and besides Gilligan would never forgive me.
And, when I take my Peanut M&Ms to eat on the plane during the flight .. as I do with my red licorice .. I assume that I will forcibly removed from the airplane?
Again, where have you obtained the numbers previously quoted?
And do you have any knowledge if the occurrence of this allergy is increasing in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Middle East?
And you were WRONG about it being good business sense for the ballparks and WRONG about it being good business sense for the airlines. Peanuts are a cheap snack food that stores well and stays fresh for a long time and satisfies most people. Replacing it with something else incurs additional costs and lowers traveler satisfaction. All for something that at most effects 1 person for every other flight. Bad business sense, which is why the airlines that were experimenting with non-panut snacks went back to distributing peanuts.
What is your reasoning for expecting the world to stop for your child? What is your reasoning to expect change for all because of a few? My daughter was severely allergic to strawberries when she was young, throat swelling, edema, hives. I just told her not to eat strawberries or strawberry jelly. Guess what she didn't.
"Modernman" well you sure picked a great rino name. How about people are responsible for their own children? Or is that just too old fashioned for you?
Did you read any of my prior posts? When did I ask the world to stop for my child?
No you're dead wrong on both. The airlines have already decided that the additional butts in the seats they get from being a peanut-free zone is less than the additional cost of snackfoods that don't store as well or stay fresh as long, plus the butts they lose because people don't like the snackfood they're being given instead. If gooing peanut-free was a money maker for the airlines they wouldn't be re-introducing the peanuts. They tried it your way and it didn't make money.
And as for the ballpark, again I'll go through the list:
additional cost to train mobile vendors not to give certain products to a certain area
additional cost to train ticket vendors which section is peanut-free so they can sell the right tickets to the right people
additional cost to train event staff to keep patrons from being certain products to a certain area
additional cost of needing more event staff to police this certain area
additional liability for making a promise if something goes wrong and that promise is broken.
Another big money LOSER. This stuff will last a season, two tops and the ballparks will end the experiment.
I made no assumption that everyone eats peanuts at a ballgame. That's a LIE. Retract it. So now you want to add more cost to it by making the ballpark FIND people that don't want to eat peanuts to fill that section?! Sure why not, lets make this money losing idea a real stinker, add a few more silly ideas and it'll become part of business 200 classes on bad ideas done poorly.
And there's not one drop of proof they'll actually get 1% more butts in the seat. That's YOUR egregious assumption that the airlines have already proven to be absolutely FALSE. Baning peanuts is a money losing scheme, it adds costs and doesn't bring in the additional revenue to make up for it. This has already been proven by the airlines and will soon be proven in the ballparks as well.
Do you have even the slightest proof at all that this allergy effects more affluent people disporportionalty?! That's another egregious assumption since it tends to be the poor people that lack the proper medical treatment necessary to maintain good health. So far you've proven to be very apt at making crap up off the top of your head, then refusing to provide a lick of proof, I don't doubt that will be the case with this silly claim as well.
The second you asked us to ban peanuts from airplanes and sections of ballparks.
I was speaking of the generic peanut allergic child that you would like the rest of the world to keep safe. Yes I read all your posts.
I'm allergic to grass and tree pollens. I vote they play on concrete and cut down every tree in sight of the stadium.
Fine with me. And businesses can decide not to sell peanuts or use peanut-based products on certain days. Is that conservative enough for you? Or maybe you want the government dictating to businesses what foods they must sell.
I wasn't aware you owned an airline or ballpark. Tell you what, feel free to sell peanuts at whatever business you own so long as you don't begrudge other business owners their peanut-related business decisions. Heck, you don't even have to fly on peanut-free airline or watch baseball games at peanut-free baseball stadiums.
Ain't a free market grand?
The free market is grand, which is why the airlines experiment in peanut-freeness has failed miserably and so will any ballpark's experiment in same. But that's not going to stop the whiners from whining and trying to get them to do it again. None of which changes the fact that when 1% of the people demand changes that effect 99% of the people, even in so minor a way as consumption of peanuts, that 1% of the people are making unreasonable demands.
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