That's just baloney! If parents taught their little ones how to eat - bite off smaller amounts (they can handle), chew well (that's well, remember - well), swallow - there would not be a problem. No one seems to take responsibility for their own children any more. It's all on doctors, teachers and others, any others they can dream up - but not the parents!! Oh, heaven forbit!

Well why not a different shape for a hot dog? Something less round, like say half a hot dog, could probably be designed and still retain good "bunability." And the smart manufacturer could probably charge a premium for the safety factor.

Mariposa obviously doesn't have children.

MsMarm - I have a child and I think it's stupid. It may be "engineered" the be the best throat blocker in the world - but that's only if injested the way it comes in the package. You are supposed to EAT (meaning chew, then swallow) it - not ingest it as it comes out of the package.

All adults at one point in their lives have an instant when they overload their swallowing system. Some even die from it and not nessacarily because of the shape. Children should be attended by a parent when introducing a new food. Such as going from formulas to solid foods. They should be taught the bite size they should take, and how much they should chew their food. Can one redesign a grape? They can choke on anything if they gorge themselves. No hotdogs do not redesigning. Parents need to better care for their children. Maybe some parents need classes on child care.

There are already larger sized ballpark hotdogs and sausages that could be used instead of the standard size hotdog. One cannot design accidents out of life. I remember Mama Cass who was very famous, who died from choking on food. Food is life! It comes in every shape you can make just by biting it. Then you would have to re-design Jelly bean and candy, and on and on. Then If they do redesign the hot dog, some child would probably choke on a piece of the bun. Although I do not like to hear of children's accidents and feel bad for the parents, accidents do happen.

I wouldn't put it past our congress to attempt to mandate by law that grapes and carrots must be redesigned so as not to be a choking hazard.

What ever happened to kids being taught by parents? This is stupid!
Like drivers having to be aware of children in streets instead of kids knowing that roads are for vehicles.
I am amazed at the recalls for hooded jerseys with hood strings. How stupid are these kids that they can choke on the strings that were on every jersey I had when I was a kid and never choked?
Stop the madness! Parents, if you want children to be protected from harm, teach them the use of products and personal responsibility.

You pose an interesting question, and I agree that parents typically do re-engineer food for young children but this could become one of those convenience foods. Not sure that a 14-year old really can be described as a child physically (in terms of being able to account for the size of food), but for little kids, this manufacturer re-engineering seems ripe for innovation. Certain food manufacturers might jump on this as an opportunity to further diversify/market their product lines to a new audience.

THIS IS PURE BS / JUST BALONEY
I'M SO SICK OF GOVERNMENT CONTROL
6 KIDS CHOK ON A DOG / ALL DOGS ARE TAKEN OFF THE MARKET
WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO

It's so easy to "redesign" a wiener - just cut it in half lengthwise, or even in quarters lengthwise, if halves still concern you.That's what has been taught to Canadian Scouting groups for many years. Simple, simple.

Unless you puree everything, every solid food is a potential choking hazard.
Should we mandate that our restaurants cut our steaks into pieces too small to choke on?
Thankfully, we have the Heimlich maneuver.
Silly Rabbit.

It's simple. Do what I've always done for small children eating hot dogs. Cut them in half lengthwise - they still fit in buns and everyone's happy. Then teach them to chew!! Quit protecting us from ourselves!!

I think it's baloney! Really--what will we do with carrots?

Why can't parents just cut the hot dogs in half so the rest of the world doesn't have to conform to something this silly and stupid?

Labeling ok changing the design, give me a break!! RobG. has it right, what ever happened to parental responsibility. Aren't parents supposed to teach their children. Does everything have to be the fault of someone else?? People take ownership be responsible!!!

I think it is time to stop the redesigning the world for children.
As a Principal for 30 years, I have seen thousands of children raised by caring parents who not only removed dangers from their children, but also taught them about the dangers. These parents ran the economic spectrum from severely disadvantaged to extremely well advantaged. I believe those parents not only kept their children safe, but also helped prepare them better for the real world by helping them understand and avoid danger in an age appropriate way.

Good gravy .. how much pandering to the lowest common denominator are we going to do as a society? Isn't this a solution waiting for the problem?

To solve all problems with food, candy or other potential choking hazards do to the lack of parenting and ignorance we should create all of these foods in a mush format. It may not look good or taste good but big government will feel good. For heaven's sake, I have survived for 67 years without a choking problem, probably because my mother thought me how to eat and my wife and I thought our daughter. Wake up America take some responsibility for your own actions.

Just state on the label that they are posibly unsafe for what ever age group turns your crank.
They still make jelly-beans, I believe. Dried beans and peas will require ID soon.

If hotdogs were a toy, they couldn't be sold because a child might put it in their mouth.

I think the parents should be redesigned to cut up the hot dogs small enough to prevent the choking hazard. Maybe alittle supervision would help while the child is eating. Everything can't be made fool-proof. One can choke while drinking water so maybe we need to redesign water too!

Absurb!

Aloha,

Amazingly, the American Society of Pedantics actually DID publish such a policy statement. I have not located that particular quote from Gary Smith on their website but I am pretty sure it exists. According to them, anything that a child can get in their mouth is a choking hazard and should be redesigned. Presumably children should be fed a liquid-only diet until they reach the age of majority and have their jaws wired shut until that time to prevent choking.

The only obvious problem with that is they will not have learned to eat without choking. There does not seem to be a plan in place to assist the 25,000 or so children who die every day in various places from malnutrition or the dozens who are killed in American hospitals each day by simple medical mistakes. No mention is made of outlawing skates, bicycles, skateboards or of locking children in bubbles to prevent them catching childhood diseases, but I am certain that's not far behind. Progressives are nothing if not concerned for children.

Thank you for drawing my attention to that policy statement. I must comment that children who manage to occlude their air passages despite the existence of teeth and taste probably should not remain in the gene pool anyway.

God save us all from the evil of hot dogs and liberal pediatricians.

T

I have had numerous occasions on which I swallowed my milk and ended up choking and gasping. Imagine what this could do to a child. Carbonated drinks could be even more hazardous. I think that at the very least, all drinkables should be labeled accordingly.

Better, they should be condensed to a form that can be incorporated into a large, lickable ball in such a way that no pieces could be bitten out of it. There will be a large impenetrable biodegrable ball in the center of the mass so that children cannot reduce the size of this "lollipop" to anything remotely capable of choking them.

I also think a similar process can be used to deal with other dangerous elongated objects placed in our path by nature and/or a deity: Carrots, celery, cucumbers, small zucchini, broccoli stalks, thick asparagus. The list is virtually endless.

Last, what about the dangers inherent in a child sucking his own thumb. What if that child should trip and accidentally bite through his or her thumb and swallow it, then choke to death on it. Either all thumbs should be surgically removed at birth (easiest solution) or the hands could be covered by thick protective mittens that do not allow children to separately suck their thumb.

One must thank heaven that our attention is being drawn to this. It seems a miracle that all humanity has not choked death thousands of years ago.

It is a blessing, that right now, when the citizens of the world suffer from mini-wars, slavery, child abuse, torture, lack of understanding of other people, loss of income, breakdown of families, global pollution, corporate blindness, materialism, and mind-numbing ignorance (not to say stupidity), it is indeed a blessing that we have found a topic, the exactly right topic to which to commit our quite limited energies and intellects.

Shouldn't parents teach their kids to sit when they eat ? No fooling around or running around allowed ! How many generations ate these prod-
ucts without a problem. What is wrong with these people ?! The parents
job is to teach their kids what they need to know to survive, etc. Guess
they are too busy working for the big house and expensive car. What ever
happened to living within your means ? 'Things' are second to family !!!
Seems like not many are qualified to be parents to me. I know I'm OLD
fashioned. But I taught my kids to think and be safe. And they grew up
to be responsible adults and parents.

Look, there is almost not a food that when eaten incorrectly does not present a choking hazard. Consider this, both hot dogs and grapes are on the hazardous list. Hot dogs can have a diameter up to three times that of grapes; and I bet that hot dogs of every size are equally culpable in choking incidents.

Why? Because when a child bolts his food, stuffs his mouth, tries to talk with his mouth full, or shows off by trying to eat the largest bite, then that child is putting himself at risk.

It is the nature of children to think themselves immortal. There is almost nothing that they won't try to do or ingest -- (as long as Mom or Dad doesn't tell them it's good for them).

What has held humankind together for so long is the premise that while it is the child's job to see what he can get away with, it is even moreso the parent's job to see that he gets away with nothing.

But in the last two or three decades, disobedience and willfulness has become the fodder of situation comedies in which the child is challenging the incompetent know-nothing parents, which point-of-view is only rectified (if at all) in the last three minutes of the show. And both child and parent has bought into this idea.

Today, we have children who pay zero attention to their parents and parents who have zero skill at imposing their will. In fact, as far as parents are concerned, it is their job not to be parental at all, but to friends to their children ... as though their children had way too many parents and much too few friends. Such parents would never dream of "imposing their will". At least not until it is too late. When the self-confident child has gotten into a stranger's car, run once too often across a street without looking both ways, chewed and swallowed just once too fast in order to get back to their favorite TV show, then they might wish they could step back five minutes in time and "impose their will."

No, hot dogs do not need redesigning. Parents need to take better care of their children. Maybe some parents need classes on child care. This is just another example of our "Nanny society" which insists on legislating all kinds of rules and regulations to protect us from taking responsibility for our actions and decisions. No matter how many rules and regulations you set in place to protect people "Sh*t happens!!". Our politicians have more important things to do than pass 'stupid' laws that enable us to shirk our responsibilities so we can sue somebody when things go wrong!

I love reading the narrow minded people who freak out about a stupid warning on their hot dog packages. Sure it's Government control, again, but not everybody is born as intelligent as these people. Education doesn't solve everything unfortunately. From the numbers of DUIs out there, some people still drive under the influence despite of all the education given. If raising this red flag about risky food helps only one parent to prevent only one death, well it had a purpose. Enjoy your full, complete, non cut up hot dogs, and I hope you won't have a heart attack if you see a warning on the package, that would indeed defy the purpose.

Life is not safe. The biggest hazard to life are the idiots that come up with these ideas. You can choke on anything including water. I sometimes wonder how I ever lived to be 72 since I ran with scissors, swam in streams, wiped dirt off candy and ate it, ate hotdogs uncooked, ate raw eggs in malted milk shakes, drank milk right out of the cow, rode a bike without a helmet, and never used antibacterial soap until I was an adult, and ate hamburgers rare. People need to teach their children how to eat and also how to have fun.

Why not redesign hotdogs so that they are rectangular rather than tubular? Everybody knows that a square peg won't fit in a round hole. Well...most people do. But that's another study...

I have had one of my kids choking with a hotdog. It happened in front of me and my wife. He was gasping for air and turned blue. My wife managed to get the sausage out in time, after many tries. It was close, but we were lucky. It was most terrifying.

People do not comprehend these things, until it happens to them.
I hope that some simple redesign can reduce the risk, for as Gary Smith put it, hot dogs are the perfect plug for a kids throat.

Is it soilent green time?

Children can choke on anything! I have raised 6 children and, thank God, I have never had a choking incident. Cutting hot dog slices in half is all it takes. My guess is that most of the children choking on hotdogs are in still high chairs and, therefore, it is definately the parents' job to present the food in pieces smaller than the childs' airway; not just sliced, but sliced and halved. Common sense people!

I'm simply stunned that this is being taken seriously. This is what comes from allowing governmental regulation of everything in existence.
Chew. It's that simple. If your child is little, cut the food up before giving it to him/her. Case closed.

It seems that everyday someone wants to make changes for some reason or other to a staple that has been around for ages. There is nothing wrong with the Hotdog the way it is, or many other items they want to change. The "experts" need to learn how to raise a family and protect their children, not change the world to suit their crazy whims. Today's children have no exposure to life as it really is. Leave it up to the so- called experts, todays children will not experience the many good things in life.

When my 3 boys were small, I not only cut their hot dogs into small pieces, I removed any trace of casing that was on it. They called them "naked." Let common sense prevail among parents. And pediatricians!

Why do so many people look at the wrong problem?
This is a lack of parental supervision - plain and simple.
Chew your food!!!!
As the father of seven and the grandfather of 17 - I am constantly seeing parents (my children) cut food into appropriate sized pieces and then watching (or feeding) as the child eats.
It scares me to watch some parents hand small children a hot dog (or some other food item) and shoo them off to play.

Hot dogs are a choking risk not only for young children, but, for anyone with a swallowing problem. I don't think they need redesign or warnings, but, talking about the problem and educating parents and adults in general is not wrong.

Absurd!!!

The nanny state strikes again.

Forget re-designing the hot dogs, let's re-dsign the idiots who waste time and resources trying to find things to re-desing.

There is no reason why a 're-designed' hot dog for children could not be produced. Leave the aduld hot dog alone but why not one for children to. I believe a smaller dog would probably benefit in 2 ways, smaller size and less fat and calories. As I read the above messages I am again impressed with how paranoid we have become.

Hmmm.... Let's do the math-

160 choking deaths
65 deaths (41%) due to food
11 deaths (17% of food deaths) due to hot dogs.

11.

We need to prioritize.