BSE pressure on German ministers

Germany is expected to announce tougher tests on cattle

BERLIN, Germany -- Cabinet ministers at the centre of Germany's mad cow scare are facing renewed pressure to resign over allegations they failed to protect consumers from infected beef.

Health Minister Andrea Fischer and Farm Minister Karl-Heinz Funke have both admitted errors in their handling of a scare triggered by the discovery last November of the first case of the disease in a German-born animal.

Six more cases have been confirmed since then and, amid growing fears this could be merely the tip of the iceberg, the government has drawn up a plan to overhaul farming practices and restore consumer confidence.

The two ministers have been called to explain precisely what new measures they are planning at a parliamentary committee hearing on Friday.

"There must be complete safety from the farmyard to the shop counter," Funke's Ministry said in a statement that conceded there had been in the past "a lack of transparency" over the origin, ingredients and safety of German meat products.

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Separately, Fischer is due to announce on Friday compulsory testing for mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), on cattle aged under 24 months after a 28-month-old cow was suspected of contracting the brain-wasting disease. At present only those over 30 months are tested.

But his announcement will come too late to reassure some parts of the world -- Australia and New Zealand said on Friday they were suspending the import of beef products from 30 European countries.

While Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has admitted complacency in thinking Germany BSE immune, he has stood by his two ministers and noted that opposition politicians -- whether in the previous federal government or currently in state authorities -- must also shoulder blame.

Fischer, a member of Schroeder's junior partners the Greens, will take particular flak for a damaging admission last month that officials in her ministry ignored expert warnings passed on to them on the risk to German beef.

"Had we known earlier what we now know, my colleagues and I on a European level should have pushed ahead with a Europe-wide ban on animal feed earlier," Funke told German radio.

Social Democrat Funke, who initially resisted a blanket ban on meat-based animal feed before Schroeder overruled him late last year, has been accused of putting Germany's farming industry before health safety.

There have as yet been no confirmed victims of BSE's deadly human equivalent in Germany, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), although the media has reported two suspected cases. More than 80 people in Britain and two in France have died of the condition.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Australia bans Europe beef
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Germany 'should have fought BSE earlier'
December 30, 2000
German call for BSE tests on sheep
December 27, 2000
New BSE case in Germany
December 24, 2000
Europe warns Germany over BSE
December 22, 2000
Mad cow fears prompt German meat bans
December 23, 2000

German Federal Government
German Agriculture Ministry

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