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."
"Is that conservative enough for you? Or maybe you want the government dictating to businesses what foods they must sell."
Since that is not what I said, no it isn't conservative enough, Modernman.
The airlines only have a liability IF they promise to be a preanut-free zone. If no such promise is made they incur no liability from people with peanut allergies ingesting peanuts. So no that doesn't outweigh the difference in cost, if anything that's additional cost because then they're going to have to take steps to garauntee no peanut allergy sufferer accidentally ingests any peanut parts. If the cost difference is 1/10 of one cent per unit, given the thousands of people an airline serves every single day that adds up really fast. Not sure how many have re-introduced peanuts, but they are coming back.
Probably a lot more than 5 minutes. First you're going to have to compose a list of all the products you sell that have peanuts in the (bags of peanuts obviously, snickers, reeses, possibly oriental food, certain M&Ms... the list gets long as I'm sure you know). Then you've got to train them all to recognize those products by wrapper and outside the wrapper. You're probably talking at least a man hour per employee, you've got a couple dozen employees, that's hundreds of dollars, and you're hoping to make that up on 3 allergic kids and whoever they bring. Of course this kind of employment isn't a stable base, there's high turn over (minimum wage job turn over is around 300% annual), so you've just added this cost to every single inbound employee. Plus you've still got the extra staffing to make that section high enforcement, changes to the ticketing software (the more you think about it the more hidden costs there are in such a plan). The thing I'm trying to show you is that it's not just a matter of declaring section 104 a peanut free zone, such a declaration must be enforced and that adds costs, and it can easily add up to a lot more than you'd get from a theoretical 1% gain in attendance.
I see so the reference is purely anecdotal and comes from a high priced specialist of a doctor that most poor people probably didn't even know there was such a guy. In other words the reference no basis in any kind of verifiable fact.
I guess they could have a hotdog free day, but science is still trying to identify all the ingredients that go in them.
"Doesn't Cracker Jacks have peanuts?"
Don't think it did when the song was first written.
Hammering nails? I love peanuts, and I have no desire to stop eating them. However, I don't mind having one day without them… it's not like I eat them every day.
How right you are! Today people refuse to take responsibility for themselves or their families. They want the world to bend over backwards to accomidate them. We live in a very sick society.
I got a good one today -- a song title off the Kill Bill Vol 1 soundtrack ---
How does "Flower of Carnage" sound?
Also babies under a certain age (til they're about 3 or 4 I believe) shouldn't eat peanut products.
From the srticle
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.
Not a strawman. And in schools across the country it's not just separate tables that are peanut-free (that makes the allergic kids feel different and separated out from the group. Cant have that.) No, it's now peanut-free schools, where NOBODY can bring in any peanut products. Do you support that?
You're right. Everyone but the peanut boy and his mom should stay home. That way, you can be happy about the preservation of the ballclub owner's private property rights, while the owner loses his shirt. But I don't think the owner would be too happy.
This may be news to you, but businessmen prosper by making their customers happy, not through breastbeating about their property rights, or by pandering to peanut people or third parties who beat their breats about the property rights of businesses they don't financially support.
BTW, you don't sound like a Marxist.
There are days in those cities when various charitable organizations will sponsor field trips for busloads of patients form the local mental institutions.
Imagine the riot a vendor yelling "PEE NUTS!!!" would cause on one of those days.
It would be like a soccer stadium in Mexico. ;^)
Dead of unknown causes?
Better not. Not only would he be accused of being mean-spirited again, the Taxpayers would get the bill for the clean-up, too. ;^)
" 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."
What a crock! Oh yeah, they don't losing thousands of dollars in lost sales plus thousands more in labor costs PAYING WORKERS to engage in unproductive practices (washing items that contained peanuts, or abutted peanut-containing items, so that they can contain ... nothing.)
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.
This Andrusiak lady is full of it. If her son were that sensitive, he could never leave the house. Every day in school, there are kids with peanut bars or peanut butter cookies (some brought from home), or wearing clothes "contaminated" by peanuts. Such a child could never walk the streets, because he would constantly be passing people brandishing peanut product, causing him to go into seizures, or even die right there.
These peanut people have caused many schools to stop serving peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Because one out of ten million children chokes to death on a hot dog she wolfed down too fast, other people have caused schools to stop serving hot dogs. My own unscientific survey shows that kids' favorite foods are pb & j sandwiches, hot dogs, and pizza. Next, some parent will demand pizza-free schools, because her kid is lactose-intolerant. And yet, if schools ban those three foods because someone might be harmed by them, they have to ban ALL foods, because there is no food that has never harmed someone. Meanwhile, the schools have gone from not serving any food a few generations ago, to now serving at least two meals a day, plus snacks. And with all-service multi-schools, they will want to serve dinner, too. Just more of the contradictions of the hubristic, total, nanny state.
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