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Leading Brands, Inc. Announces Fiscal 2003 Year End Results

VANCOUVER, CANADA - June 17, 2004 - LEADING BRANDS, INC. (NASDAQ: LBIX), North America’s only fully integrated premium beverage company, announces results for its 2003 fiscal year ended February 29, 2004.

Revenue for the year was $41,503,000US ($56,680,000Cdn) versus $47,362,000US ($73,808,000 Cdn) the prior year. Net loss was $1,847,000US ($2,523,000Cdn) or $0.12 US ($0.17Cdn) per share versus a net loss of $0.46US ($0.71Cdn) per share in the prior fiscal year.

Leading Brands Chairman and CEO Ralph McRae said: “Results for fiscal 2003 were negatively impacted in two principal ways. The first was the less than efficient operation of our plants caused by disruptions surrounding changes to existing, and addition of new, bottling lines. As earlier explained, those issues are well behind us.

“Second are matters surrounding the activities of management of Leading Brands of America and others, which in part are the subject of a lawsuit commenced by that company and pending in the District Court for the State of Connecticut. We have since re-focused our US business from one that was primarily dependant upon regional distributors to a hybrid model based on the Integrated Distribution System (IDS) that works so well for us in Canada.”

Mr. McRae added: “As mentioned in prior releases, the decrease in revenues versus last year is primarily the result of the change in billing methods to one of our largest co-pack customers.”

The Company will hold a conference call in conjunction with the release of its Q1 2004 results, anticipated before the end of June 2004.

About Leading Brands, Inc.
Leading Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:LBIX) is North America’s only fully integrated premium beverage company. The Company’s unique Integrated Distribution System (IDS) ™ offers turnkey, one-stop shopping to food and beverage brand owners, including manufacturing, distribution, sales/marketing and licensing. In addition, Leading Brands produces their own line of beverages such as TrueBlue®, LiteBlue®, TREK® Natural Sports Drinks, NITRO® Energy Drinks, INFINITY® Health Water™, Country Harvest® Juices, and Caesar’s® Cocktails.

Forward Looking Statements
Certain information contained in this press release includes forward-looking statements. Words such as “believe”, “expect,” “will,” or comparable terms, are intended to identify forward-looking statements concerning the Company’s expectations, beliefs, intentions, plans, objectives, future events or performance and other developments. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are based on information available to the Company on the date hereof. Such statements speak only as of the date hereof. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company’s estimations and projections are disclosed in the Company’s securities filings and include, but are not limited to, the following: general economic conditions, weather conditions, changing beverage consumption trends, pricing, availability of raw materials, economic uncertainties (including currency exchange rates), government regulation, managing and maintaining growth, the effect of adverse publicity, litigation, competition and other risk factors described from time to time in securities reports filed by Leading Brands, Inc.

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