I've eaten apricot kernels as a kid, along with most of my family, certainly much more than 8 seeds a day, and we never had any issues. I've also seen them sold in stores in China, cheaply and in bulk. I am guessing that either (a) they're just trying to be over-cautious to protect themselves from potential liability, or (b) perhaps some people have a heightened sensitivity to this, or (c) perhaps it's some special, more poisonous type of apricot - which makes me question why they wouldn't just pick a less poisonous variety for the product. EDIT: Researching this more, I'm seeing that the danger is much more real than I thought. Not sure how to reconcile this with my very vivid childhood memories of consuming these things in pretty large quantities (though like the other poster in this thread, we've had to break apricot pits with a hammer to get at the seeds, we didn't have the seeds conveniently pre-packaged).