Cookies with a kick hit shelves

Forget trendy chocolate vodka shots - Australian baker Arnott's reckons alcohol-flavoured chocolate biscuits will take the cake in New Zealand, providing the company's controversial new line can weather a storm of adverse publicity.

Arnott's created a stir in Australia yesterday when Kahlua-flavoured Mint Slices and Tia Maria-tinged Tim Tams hit supermarket shelves.

They will be released throughout New Zealand on March 1.

The products sparked immediate condemnation on both sides of the Tasman from groups claiming that the biscuits - which contain 0.1 per cent alcohol - could lure children.

In New Zealand, Alcohol Advisory Council chairman Andrew Hornblow said: "While the alcohol content is minimal, the marketing ploy of packing foods in a way which can allow children to be attracted to alcohol related products is the thin edge of the wedge."

Drug Foundation executive director Sally Jackman criticised Arnott's for trying to create a new demand for alcohol-flavoured biscuits.

"We are saturated in alcohol imagery, people have it with breakfast, lunch and dinner, now we've got it in our biscuits."

Arnott's spokeswoman Toni Callaghan said the product was targeted at women aged between 20 and 45, not children.

She said a person would need to consume the equivalent of his or her body weight in biscuits to reach a blood-alcohol content of 50 mg per 100 ml of blood, the drink-driving limit in most of Australia.

New Zealanders would have to eat even more because the limit here is 80mg per 100ml.

- NZPA