New Survey Shows Bullying Of Children With Food Allergies On The Rise

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Imagine being bullied for having a food allergy.

A recent survey shows that's exactly what's happening to school-age children – and it's happening at an alarming rate, CBS 2's Elise Finch reported Tuesday.

Jo Goldfarb's daughter, Samantha, has a life-threatening peanut allergy. She says the 8-year-old still has nightmares about how a former classmate taunted her because of it.

"(The classmate) took a peanut butter cracker, chewed it up and proceeded to smear it in her hair," Goldfarb said. "The teacher took care of the situation. The parents apologized, but my daughter was traumatized. She would wake up screaming in the middle of the night for months on end saying 'No!' and the boy's name."

Had that chewed-up peanut butter cracker touched Samantha's scalp or skin she could have been sent to the hospital. As upsetting as that sounds, research shows incidents like that are fairly common, Finch reported.

"We looked at about 250 children who just came in to see us for food allergy and we surveyed them, the children and their parents about having been teased or harassed or bullied about food allergy and we found that in the children, about a third indicated that they had been bullied," said Dr. Scott Sicherer of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai.

Now the non-profit organization FARE, which stands for Food Allergy and Research Education, is launching a campaign to raise awareness about food allergy bullying, saying it's not a joke.

The group suggests parents talk openly with their children and urges school administrators to offer education about food allergies and establish policies that protect children who have them.

"If the parent knew about it and did something about it, specifically spoke to the school, frequently the bullying did stop after that," Dr. Sicherer said.

Until then, Samantha will continue to dream about a world without peanuts and her mom is working hard to prevent food allergy bullying.

One in 13 American children has food allergies. That's roughly two in every classroom, Finch reported.

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