Reports connecting chips and cancer have been rubbished by the British Potato Council (BPC) as an 'ill-informed' food scare.

The potato product was reported as possibly containing carcinogens after Swedish food safety authorities reported high levels of acrylamide in a batch of chips.

But the report has yet to be published, and the BPC says it is impossible to make 'reasonable judgements'.

BPC research and development officer Mike Storey told the Journal: 'We've seen the information and we've been in contact with the Swedish researcher as well.

'When we emailed [the Swedes] asking for a copy of the report they replied saying the manuscript is not yet published and they have no comment. The report has come out in advance and that's not helpful, but they've obviously raised an issue which needs to be looked at. This does need to be verified, but it's really down to the Food Standards Agency and the European Union to review those results in some detail.' Leif Busk, head of research at the national food administration in Sweden, said: 'I have been in this field for 30 years and I have never seen anything like this before. It may now be possible to explain some of the cases of cancer caused by food.' The FSA's initial statement concluded: 'There is no need for people to change their diets.' But when asked how it could be sure of this, their spokeswoman told the Journal: 'There have been hundreds and thousands of studies done on food, but acrylamide has never been found in food in such high levels before. This is one experiment conducted by one laboratory. Obviously we are going to have to look at it ourselves to establish what the situation is.' New UK research will be commissioned 'as soon as possible', but as far as conducting further tests goes, an FSA spokeswoman told the Journal: 'We will replicate the testing done by the Swedes. They have done one study in one laboratory. We are going to look at UK foods and compare their methods together with other methods and then establish the situation.' The FSA was unsure of the timing of its investigations. l