• More than 12 million Americans suffer from food allergy today.
  
  
• Food allergies kill more than 150 Americans each year and are responsible for 30,000 emergency room visits.
  
  
• For reasons that scientists cannot yet explain, food allergies afflict more and more children each year.  Between 1997 and 2002, the number of children under age five in the United States suffering from peanut allergies doubled.
  
  
• The average American elementary school today has ten children suffering from severe food allergies.
  
  
• There are currently no medications to cure or control food allergies. Strict avoidance of the allergenic food is the only way to avoid a reaction.
  
  
• The most common allergens –peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, milk, fish, shellfish, wheat and soy – are staples of our food supply and nearly impossible to avoid completely.
  
  
• Food allergy research is woefully underfunded.  The National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends less than $10 million a year on food allergy research, compared to $107 million on attention deficit disorder and $1.2 billion on diabetes.  These are all important diseases that deserve attention.
  
  
• Scientists believe that we can find a cure.  Using existing science developed to treat asthma, airborne allergens and venom (bee sting) allergies, researchers are confident that a vaccine for major food allergies can be found within a decade if the research receives sufficient funding.
  
  
• For some children, even small traces of allergenic foods, as little as a drop of milk left on a shopping cart from another child’s snack, for instance, can trigger life-threatening anaphylaxis.
  
  
• Severe food allergy disqualifies an individual from military service eligibility, so the growing incidence of food allergy may significantly impact the next generation of our nation’s armed forces.
  
  
• Food allergy affects the entire community surrounding a food allergic child.  Schools attended by severely food allergic children must take a variety of precautions – from sanitizing classroom toys to segregating dining areas to providing special medical staff and training – in order to safeguard their health.
  
  
• Finding a cure for food allergy will not only improve the lives of allergic children and their parents, but will also lessen the burdens on school teachers, administrators, and parents of non-allergic children.

Please support our fight – Together, we can save
children’s lives.