Everyone knows that hot dogs are terrible for you, but it’s not just the nutrition—they account for an astonishing 17 percent of food choking deaths occurring among children under ten. So now the American Academy of Pediatrics wants hot dogs labeled as choking hazards.
One prominent pediatrician notes:
If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child’s airway, it would be a hot dog.
In one of the most loathsome meat industry PR responses I’ve ever seen, Janet Riley, president of the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council, questions the need for a labeling requirement, while noting that she herself is a mother. Given the overwhelming association between hot dogs and choking fatalities, you have hoped that she would want all mothers to be informed of this risk.
Here’s a nine page PDF of the Pediatrics policy statement. Link.
