Only store bought treats for the kids

fear of lawsuits is front and center in determining policies in schools.

land of the free home of lots o' lawyers...

Buy ready made.

Well with store bought goods at least you have the ingredients list and the possible disclaimer that might indicate if the same machines used to make product x (with peanuts) is also used to make product y (without peanuts) but where product y still has a possible exposure to peanuts. With this disclaimer in mind, teachers can veto or allow certain store purchased items by looking at the ingredients and going by a case by case basis.

The same can't be said about home cooked items unless the child is vetted in the possible crosscontamination of the brought in home cooked items with any other possible trace amounts of common food allergenic products. You can't expect the child to know all of the ingredients of a home cooked item plus whatever food products that have been cooked in that same kitchen that might 'contaminate' the food brought to school.

I think it's a tad overkill but the school doesn't apparently want to take chances.

lol it took me over an hour to make those almonds, and they ate them all up. I have a feeling one of the parents might have complained,

Very good point!

Whaaaat?

Not here.

What pressure we have tends to be in the opposite direction -- home-made is better than store-bought, but store-bought is acceptable.

We ARE reminded over and over again that we have to be careful about bringing nuts. Several kids in sozlet's grade have nut allergies. Is there any chance that was what it was about (almonds) rather than the store-bought part?

edit: just saw Tsar's reply, that does make sense. Here it's just "be careful" though. We bring in a lot of brownies and chocolate chip cookies that have not had anything to do with nuts at any point in their creation.

This comes up a lot on the food forums I go to. Many school boards in the U.S. do not allow sharing of any homemade treats.

Lots of complaints that the teacher just collects money and then buys a slab cake at Costco or someplace similar. Some parents would prefer to make snacks where they can control the ingredients.

Rockhead's right - the threat of lawsuits seems to come up in those food forum threads about school treats quite frequently.

Actually it wasn’t about the nuts from what I heard, the parents are not allowed to make snacks at home and bring them for the other kids. It could be only something store bought and must be in the store packaging and unopened.

Wow!

I do live in Mayberry I guess. Hope it holds out 'til the kid graduates.

I can see whey the school wouldn’t allow some snacks, such as the nuts for reasons sozobe stated. But the teacher should have known the school rules and informed the parents who were making the snacks for their kids to bring, she didn’t.

we tend to have that as well - the school asking for home made stuff. But I have heard that many schools are asking for store bought or forgoing stuff like bake sales because of the potential of making some one sick with home made items.

Seems dumb to me.