Italian prisoners to make eco-friendly ice cream

MILAN, Oct 19 (Reuters) Inmates from a prison just outside Milan will help Italy fight global warming by making environment-friendly ice cream from local milk and berries and fruits, Italian farmers' group Coldiretti said.

Ice cream lovers will be able to taste a gelato fresh from behind the bars in February when a small group of inmates from a high security wing of the prison in Opera, a few km south of Milan, start their in-house production.

''We will make an experimental, artisan product, using fresh local raw materials which are not genetically modified,'' Marco Molinelli and Roberto Saini from Jobinside company which is running the project, were quoted by Coldiretti as saying yesterday.

Every such effort counts in Italy which lags far behind targets set under the Kyoto Protocol for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) output.

Coldiretti, which is spearheading a ''zero kilometre'' campaign, has been urging Italians to produce and buy food made from local products in order to cut emissions of heat-trapping CO2 linked to transporting goods.

Coldiretti says Italians spend more than 5 billion euros 7.13 billion dollars a year on some 600 flavours of ice-cream.

REUTERS RKM BST0500