Food Safety warns of the presence of ‘foreign bodies’ in ice cream from Aldi, Mercadona and Lidl

The Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (Aesan) through the health authorities of Catalonia, has received a health alert notification for the presence of ‘foreign bodies’ in ice cream for sale in Aldi, Mercadona and Lidl supermarkets.

Aesan recommends that those consumers who have the affected products in their home return them to the point of purchase. At the same time, it reports that the affected supermarkets are already working on the withdrawal of products from the channel.

Specifically, the affected ice creams are:

And the affected batches can be consulted at the notice issued by Aesan.

The notice comes one day after this same body extended the alert on the presence of ethylene oxide in vanilla ice cream and other flavors of the Häagen-Dazs brand from various batches and different best before dates.

2-Chloroethanol is a metabolite of ethylene oxide and on July 12 its presence was reported in ice cream of this brand distributed in France, but now Aesan warns of its presence in sales channels in Spain.

Häagen-Dazs, through its parent company, General Mills, reports that the source of the toxic alcohol contamination is the use of a vanilla extract from Madagascar. According to ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry)ethylene oxide is “a sweet-smelling flammable gas” that dissolves easily in most organic solvents.

Ethylene oxide is classified in the EU as “possible mutagen, possible carcinogen and possible reproductive toxicant”. Since the 1990s, its use in the agricultural industry and phytosanitary products -pesticides- is prohibited.

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