School telling us to remove nut trees from community orchard

[Calling]

We are in a local voluntary group and local people planted an orchard in the grounds of a school, for the school.

Now, the school has written to say that we have to remove the nut trees because one pupil has a bad nut allergy.

There are fruit and nut trees, that the local people planted some years ago and we have put a lot of work into weeding and watering. The yield was actually for the kids and we are volunteering with the school with and nature sessions outside.

Before anyone says we are potential child killers, we do understand the importance of safety. There is a management plan in place, but the school has been asked by a parent to remove our trees.
I do feel disheartened - nobody in the school said no to nut trees originally.

I feel it’s unrealistic to remove all threats that the children come into contact with outside. Many trees, fungi and plants are toxic and if consumed can kill so we teach our children not to eat them. Cars are also a massive danger but we all teach our children how to deal with them safely. Allowing everyone to continue to enjoy the orchard with a temporary fence could be a solution.
I applaud all the volunteers who have created what must be a wonderful amenity and hope it can remain for many years to come.

No one is suggesting all the things you suggest. This is a straw man argument.

@NuthatchtreeloverAbsolutely. Some of us are suggesting this.

but what if a squirrel or rodent nibbled the shell and released the nut onto the ground?

@Olifleck What if, what if, what if??? Fence the trees! Honestly - this is so far fetched! These children could never play anywhere at this rate!

Squirrel Nutkin has got under the nets that we put up and left shells under the nut trees. There could be a tiny risk from the shells, but really, I won't find any scientific reports about that.

You tell the child not to go playing where nuts have dropped, just like you tell a child with cat induced asthma not to stroke cats.

Are you also going to to tell the hundreds of other children not to touch the nuts and go near the allergic child or touch them? That would be fun to manage with primary age children don’t ya think!

My children have allergies so I understand the parents’ point of view. You can tell your child stay away from the trees, but it’s the worry of their friends playing with discarded nuts on the ground and then coming in and getting bits of nut over things. Or possibly even teasing their allergic friend with nuts? It happens unfortunately.

Some allergic people start having clinical reactions to a piece of nut about the size of a grain of sand. So having even residue about is a genuine worry unfortunately.

In any case, the decision has already been made by the school that the trees have to go.

All you need to decide, OP, is whether your group can help them achieve this or not.
It’s a big ask I know, as well as being very disappointing for you. The school should have been more on the ball day one.

Agreed, that just wouldn't work.

Well, they manage it like they should hopefully be managing milk and all other allergens that will be in the school! Training and education and observation

And still a week later the school hasn’t actually confirmed whether the child in question even reacts specifically to hazelnuts and almonds, so it could well be that they are allergic to peanuts and removing the trees would not affect their risk at all.

But they obviously don’t want that responsibility which is why they have said the trees have to go. One less thing to manage. I’m sure if there was milk dropping from trees in an uncontrolled environment then they would have the same stance. It’s not a competition.

I understand why you're sad about this. But you don't need to turn yourself inside out for the lives of the hazel trees, at least. They grow wild, everywhere, round here. We have several unplanted hazel trees in our garden that we will eventually chop out because we don't want a big tree there but they're doing no harm when they're small. I don't think that makes me a tree killer. The almond is more sad as they're less common but maybe you could take that one yourself?

How do you know what the school has confirmed?
It’s very unlikely they’d give out a child’s specific medical details to local volunteers, but they obviously feel there’s a risk if they’ve asked for the trees to be removed.

They’re probably future-proofing too.

Many nut allergic people aren’t certain what specific nut they react to clinically btw. It’s not completely straightforward and it’s common enough to be told to avoid them all.

For example, DS’s IgE blood tests and skin prick tests reacted to most nuts to a greater or lesser extent (as well as to other foods and various environmental triggers). However, the only way you know for sure if you can eat the food is to do a food challenge in hospital, as sometimes you can be ‘sensitized’ but not clinically reactive. That’s unless you have already reacted to the food obviously…eg he’d already had an anaphylactic reaction to egg eaten at home so no need to check that one with a food challenge! (That reaction was the reason the GP referred him for allergy testing in the first place.)

He did a challenge for peanut in hospital and reacted to a tiny amount. We’re not in the UK and that cost nearly €1000. We haven’t tested the others yet.

In practical terms different types of nuts are often processed in the same facilities so cross contamination is often a risk anyway. The consultant told us to avoid all nuts for the moment. We find it difficult to buy seeds for the same reason.

I realise cross contamination is not an issue here, but just explaining the reality of living with nut allergies. In DS’s case his blood and skin tests show strong reactions to both almond and hazelnut. Though there is a still a chance he would not react clinically, he has been told to avoid all nuts by his allergy specialist.

Yes you should. How would you feel if a child had a serious anaphylactic shock?
Possibly when they were planted people were less aware of how serious nut allergies can be? ( I haven’t read the whole thread on the occasion.)

The school don’t have to confirm anything to anyone. Like I said before, it’s nobody’s business including OPs. They want trees removed from their property. I would suggest they do this themselves though and not expect the op to do it.

I’d assume OP would have said either way if the school had confirmed whether the child’s allergy was actually tree nuts.
It’s not at all obvious that the school is informed about the actual risk to the child, there have been many examples on this thread of schools being overzealous with nut allergies yet blasé about all other allergies. A lot of people (as evident on this thread) still think all nut allergies are anaphylactic and no other allergies can be serious.

OP said the school was asked by the child’s parents to remove the trees. Presumably the parents know whether there’s a risk or not. It’s an easy fix for the school to remove the trees so that’s what they’ll do.

I don’t believe that anyone on this thread said that one allergen was more serious than the other. Feel free to correct me though?

I do believe however that’s it’s dependant on the actual school and staff how serious they take an allergen not the actual allergen itself.

@Mangoripples Not if the site is fenced off! Who can then get at the nuts?

@MeetMeOnTheCorner
I assume the school wants to use their site and OP has already described it being used by the children, both casually and for nature sessions if I understand correctly.

Yes, if it’s fenced off there would be no issue, but I can’t see why the school would want to do that rather than remove the trees. And they do want to remove the trees…it seems that decision has already been made.

I was going to say something like this. It sounds as though the school have decided that they want to remove eight trees they own on land they own. It doesn’t sound as though they are likely to revisit that decision.

It doesn’t have to be the OP’s problem though.

@Mangoripples Yes, I guess fencing costs money. I’d start another community orchard that’s not on school land. Leave the remaining trees to the school. Schools grounds are not for a whole community either as they often lock the gates due to safeguarding. The locals are often not allowed to wander around. The community orchards I know are on parish council land and are mostly fruit trees. However several I know have ponds and dc could drown!! There is risk in everything!

From the school’s point of view I doubt it’s about fencing costing money. Why would they want to fence off part of the school grounds that they presently use, when they can remove the risk to their pupil by getting the nut trees removed?

I don’t think this was ever meant to be a community orchard so I’m not sure why you keep mentioning that.
OP said it’s on school property and was planted for the school.