Four ice-cream products pulled amid pesticide fears
Four popular Haagen-Dazs ice cream products have been removed from supermarket shelves after the Centre for Food Safety urged the public not to consume them due to the possible presence of ethylene oxide, a pesticide banned by the European Union as it can cause cancer.
Sales of "Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream Pint" (473 milliliters); "Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream Mini cup" (100 milliliters); "Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream Mini cup" (75 milliliters); and "Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream Bulk" (9.46 liters), with best-before dates from July 3, 2022 to July 17, 2023, have been stopped.
Those products were made in France and imported by General Mills Hong Kong.
A Centre for Food Safety spokesman urged the public not to consume the affected products if they had bought any.
"The CFS received a notification from the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) of the European Commission that the above-mentioned products were found with a pesticide, ethylene oxide, which is not authorised by the EU. According to the information provided by the RASFF, the affected products have been imported into Hong Kong,” the spokesman said.
The spokesman added that the Centre for Food Safety urged the importer to initiate a recall of the affected batches and that it will continue to follow up and take appropriate action.
Traders should also immediately stop selling the products concerned if they have them, he added.
The European Union banned the use of ethylene oxide in the food industry as it is "carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic."
Ethylene oxide has been classified as group one by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, meaning the chemical is carcinogenic to humans.
Exposure can cause headaches, nausea, diarrhea, difficulty breathing and other problems, while long-term exposure can cause cancer in humans.