GENEVA (Reuters) - International food safety experts, meeting in emergency session Thursday at the World Health Organization, said fatty foods could be causing cancer, but more research was needed.

The 25 specialists, mainly from Europe, the United States and Japan, were summoned to Geneva after researchers in Sweden found high levels of acrylamide, a substance that causes cancer in animals, in carbohydrate-rich foods such as potato chips.

"Acrylamide is of high concern because it can cause cancer in animals and probably causes it in human beings," Jorgen Schlundt, the UN body's food safety program coordinator, told a news conference.

But he said more studies were needed before firm conclusions could be drawn and recommendations made to the public about their eating habits.

After 3 days of closed-door talks, experts recommended more research be done on how acrylamide is formed, and at what temperatures, as well on the types of foods involved--work which could take from weeks to a couple of years.

"On the information we have at the moment, we cannot give consumers very specific advice such as to avoid eating chips of this or that brand," said Dieter Arnold of Germany's Federal Institute for Health Protection of Consumers, who chaired the meeting.

Stockholm University researchers found an ordinary bag of potato chips may contain up to 500 times more acrylamide than the maximum concentration the WHO allows in drinking water.

The Swedish findings, released in May, were subsequently backed up by similar tests in Norway and Britain.

"We'd rather that people eat a balanced and varied diet and moderate their consumption of fried and fatty foods," Arnold said, adding that was long-standing WHO advice.

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