My son's camp has banned peanuts and tree nuts.  I have 3 questions.
1) What percentage of americans have allergies to these nuts? Peanuts
should be the focus, and is it possible to identify a "severe, ie:
life-threatening" percentage?
2) Are there recommendations from "experts" to ban the outdoor
consumption of these products?
3) Identify a few actual stories of children who were seriously
injured or died from exposure at camp or school.

I appologize for the small price, but my budget is small, thus my
concern about the elimiation of an economical source for protein form
my kids.

In Australia a schoolboy died after eating peanut paste/butter.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/03/21/1016660123806.html

http://www.allergy.org.nz/newsMedia/media/0916Legislation.php

The second link has content referring to Canada's "Sabrina Law".

I guess that the Camp Organisers are being ultra careful ...

And who's to blame them with the high exposure to compensation claims in the US?

In the U.S. there are roughly 200 annual deaths from food-related
anaphylaxis.  About 80 percent of these are due to peanuts, walnuts,
pecans, pistachios, and so forth. That's about 160 annual deaths from
nuts.

Compare this to other death rates for pre-high-school-age children, 5
to 14 years of age (rates rounded): firearms, 375; motor vehicle
accident, 1770; cardiovascular disease, 360; drowning, 375; fire (and
related), 260.

A child is more likely to die being driven to school (except by school
bus) than by exposure to peanuts. If you are a gun owner, your child
is forty times more likely to be injured by your gun than die from
peanuts. He or she is 1000 more likely to require hospital treatment
for a bicycle accident than succumb to the deadly peanut.

There are more dodgeball injuries than deaths from peanuts (this
injury figure does not include the mental anguish inflicted by this
barbaric "game" sanctioned by so-called gym "teachers" who were really
escaped Nazi prison guards-- Mr Dring, indeed, I'll bet your REAL name
was Untersturmbahnfuhrer Sturmun Drang, wasn't it, you sadistic heap
of bat excrement-- that were desperately nurturing a fledling Fourth
Reich to be populated by the likes of mouth-breathers such as Jimmy
Hickswa, a hulking hyper-pituitary case that failed three times before
he got to 8th grade, making him the only student who needed a parking
space).

Is the peanut thing being overblown? Probably. But would you, as an
administrator or political representative, want to go against a
request to "do the right thing" and be labeled a monster? Probably
not.

For stories, peruse the results from this search string:

peanut allergy death camp
://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&rls=DVXA%2CDVXA%3A2006-10%2CDVXA%3Aen&q=peanut+allergy+death+camp


Try these links:

Peanut allergy: where do we stand?
http://www.allerg.qc.ca/peanutallergy.htm#statistics
Canadian site, but still good information

Peanut Allergy - The Facts
http://www.peanutsusa.org.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.page&pid=67

Peanut Allergy
http://www.allergicchild.com/peanut_allergy.htm


The problem with peanuts is that IF there is an allergy, which is
rare, the chance is VERY HIGH statistically that ANY exposure will
require IMMEDIATE medical attention, or death will occur quickly.