"Ice Cream Gate"

The suspects allegedly falsified records, fed incriminating evidence through a paper shredder and conducted a cover-up so pervasive that one investigator calls it "Ice Cream Gate." Indeed, if the 244-count indictment handed up by a Brooklyn grand jury last week can be proved in a trial, a giant scoop of American innocence will have melted away--for the accused is none other than Good Humor Corp., which advertises its ice cream as "the next best thing to love."

The indictment charges that from 1972 through last April, the company falsified records and knowingly shipped out of a plant in Maspeth, Queens, "an adulterated food product." According to Brooklyn District Attorney Eugene Gold, that means Good Humor sold millions of Wildberry Whammy, X-5 Jetstar Grape, Orange Push-Up and Chocolate Fudge Cake cones, bars and other ice cream confections containing far more than the legally allowable quantity of coliform bacteria. The bacteria are commonly found in drinking water and dairy products; in small amounts they are nontoxic, but large quantities of them can cause illness. Gold says that bacteria-laden Good Humors were sold throughout the Eastern seaboard and as far west as Kansas.

Bacteria Count. If convicted, Good Humor faces fines of $1.8 million. Donald Kennedy, now on leave as production director, faces a six-month jail sentence; James Jerram, former manager of quality control, could be jailed for four years. Jerram is on leave from Good Humor's parent, Thomas J. Lipton Inc., which is itself a unit of the Dutch-based multinational Unilever. Good Humor General Counsel David St. Clair says the company is "not guilty."

According to D.A. Gold, the investigation began last November when a "disgruntled employee" of the plant rang the bell on Good Humor. Sleuths looked into the matter, but, says Gold, the company began destroying records of coliform counts, and the plant was closed on April 28, less than two weeks after Gold subpoenaed its papers. Attorney St. Clair maintains that it was shut for economic reasons: "It was kind of out of date." Good Humor now supplies its markets from plants in Chicago and Baltimore.

In all, says Gold, 4,000 to 5,000 documents containing coliform counts on batches of ice cream were destroyed. Investigators nonetheless maintain that they discovered the plant kept two sets of quality-control records: a false one to show state inspectors and an elaborately coded secret set containing true bacteria counts for the company's own use. The secret books showed coliform counts on some batches of ice cream 200 times as high as the law allows. Worse, many other batches were labeled TNTC --meaning that the bacteria were Too Numerous To Count.

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