CANK Note:

BEN AND JERRY'S gourmet ice-cream is at the centre of a health scare after scientists revealed yesterday that it contains eight times the safe level of industrial pollutants.

Research by American scientists shows a serving of the company's World's Best Vanilla Ice Cream contains what Britain currently regards as unacceptable amounts of dioxins which are linked to cancer and other diseases.

Scientist Steve Milloy said: "Many children enjoy Ben & Jerry's but, by the company's own standards, its ice cream is not safe. Is Ben & Jerry's choosing corporate profits over children's health? An appropriate new flavour would be "Tasty Toxics" or "World's Best Hypocrisy.' " The levels of dioxins in Ben and Jerry's are eight times greater than the Department of Health's "safe daily dose".

The finding could lead to 200 extra cancers developing among lifetime consumers of Ben & Jerry's, according to scientist Dr Michael Gough who carried out the research.

Critics now accuse Ben & Jerry's of being hypocritical because the company markets itself on being environmentally friendly.

Mr Milloy said: "Ben & Jerry's and Greenpeace - the company's source for information on dioxin - have both concluded that dioxin is not safe at any level. If it is so dangerous, perhaps Ben & Jerry's should remove its ice cream from the market until it is safe and is consistent with the company's promotional literature."

Ben & Jerry's hit back, complaining that the company was being used "to create a smokescreen around the issue".

They said: "There is nothing we can do about the levels of dioxins in our ice cream. It gets into the food chain through industrial emissions and is present in mother's milk. As a company we have looked at what we do to control dioxins." The pollutants are largely created by incinerating waste, metal smelting and vehicles. World Health Organisation guidelines state safe levels are between one and four picograms per kilogram of bodyweight a day. Britain still lags behind international opinion with much higher "safe" levels of 10 picograms a day.

In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency is reconsidering its guidelines and is likely to conclude that dioxins are 10 times more dangerous than currently thought. At the moment the safe US limit is only 0.006 picograms a day. Dr Gough, a former American government scientist, said: "The level of dioxin in a single serving of the Ben & Jerry's World's Best Vanilla Ice Cream, which we tested, was almost 200 times greater than the EPA's "virtually safe daily dose".

He added: "A serving of that ice cream would contain 80 picograms of dioxin. In contrast, the Tosco Refinery wastewater discharged into San Francisco Bay is permitted to contain only 0.14 picograms of dioxin per litre."

While he admitted that the sample may not be representative of all Ben & Jerry's ice cream, he stressed it is consistent with current scientific literature.

The study was presented at the Dioxins 2000 conference yesterday in Monterey, California. A spokesman for Friends of the Earth said: "Dioxins are pollutants that are everywhere and concentrated in fatty foods. It is known they are likely to be in ice cream and other milk products. We should be making an effort to get rid of the emissions of dioxins through recycling rather than incinerating."