from TIME...

This past Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a new policy statement on choking prevention for children, recommending, among other things, changes in government oversight of food choking hazards, and asking food manufacturers to consider redesigning potentially dangerous food products, such as hot dogs and hard candies. In the U.S., 10,000 children ages 14 and younger visit the emergency room due to food-related choking each year, and between 66 to 77 children age 10 and younger die each year from food-related choking. According to one study cited in the report, 17% of food-related choking deaths involve hot dogs. To better understand the magnitude of childhood choking risks, what the AAP hopes to accomplish with the new recommendations, and what a redesigned hot dog might look like, TIME spoke with Dr. Gary Smith, immediate past chairman of the Committee on Injury Violence and Poison Prevention at the American Academy of Pediatrics and lead author of the AAP policy statement:



TIME: Why is the American Academy of Pediatrics coming out with this new policy statement on choking now? Have choking deaths increased significantly in recent years?

Dr. SMITH: The American Academy of Pediatrics has been involved in this topic for over two decades and actually convened a task force back in the early 1980s to look at food choking and children. What has really been the impetus for doing something more is that, during the last two decades, we haven't seen huge steps forward. And, [in 2001] there was a wake-up call that really got us concerned again: this cluster of deaths occurred due to gel candies. These candies were being marketed internationally and there were children dying in Japan, Canada, the United States. What became very clear after this gel candy episode occurred was how unprepared the [Food and Drug Administration] (FDA) was and how ill-prepared in general we were for responding to choking hazards when it happens to be food. (See the top 10 dangerous foods.)

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