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Facts About Germany German History German Recipes |
2001 did not start well for the German government. BSE hasn't just cut the cattle industry in Germany, but taken Chancellor Schroeder's cabinet down as well. It was a double-pack of resignations on January 9, 2001: German health and agriculture ministers quit over their handling of an outbreak of mad cow disease that has shattered consumer confidence in beef and even the country's beloved sausages.
The two officials, Andrea Fischer, the health minister and a member of the environmentalist Green Party, and Karl-Heinz Funke, the Social Democratic agriculture minister, became the first ministerial-level casualties of Europe's battle with mad cow disease. The illness, believed to result from animal products in feed, has been linked to a nervous condition in humans - new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease - from which 80 people in Britain and 2 in France have died. Germany has had no human casualties, but panic over beef has been at a high level for weeks. Health minister Fischer was bitterly attacked on the eve of the Christmas holidays, for announcing that some kinds of wurst, or sausage, might be dangerous, just days after she had said they presented no threat. Many of Germany's several hundred varieties of sausage contain beef, and newspapers have been full of lists of the risk levels of the different kinds. Beef and sausage sales have plunged, while poultry is in unprecedented demand. For a long time, the government's position was that Germany was free of mad cow disease because it used grain for feed rather than products containing animal feed. But after the systematic testing began last autumn, several cases of the disease have been discovered. In total, 10 cases have been confirmed. The official explanation is that the cows were probably fed tainted grain. Ms. Fischer admitted that she had made mistakes, but suggested that the real causes of the hysteria in Germany and throughout Europe were beyond the control of any minister. "The real cause of the crisis is to be found in the industrialized farming economy," she said. "Financial interests dominate and are put above consumer interests. On top of that, consumers are reluctant to pay the price for good food." The resignations came at an awkward time for Chancellor Schroeder. In two years, a total of seven ministers have left Schroeder's cabinet. Andrea Fischer and Karl-Heinz Funke were cabinet members number six and seven that left. Two other members of the cabinet have quit in recent months - former transport minister Reinhard Klimmt (number five) and former culture minister Michael Naumann (number four). Mr. Klimmt was involved in a financial scandal; Mr. Naumann decided to return to the publishing industry. Their successors are Kurt Bodewig and Julian Nida Ruemelin accordingly. The first three persons to leave were Oskar Lafontaine, minister of finance (number one), successor -- Hans Eichel; Bodo Hombach, chancellery minister (number two), successor -- Frank-Walter Steinmeier; and Franz Muentefering, transport minister (number three), whose successor Reinhard Klimmt resigned a year after him and whose successor Kurt Bodewig became. In addition, three top ministers - foreign minister Joschka Fischer, finance minister Hans Eichel and defense minister Rudolf Scharping - are under pressure. Mr. Fischer (no relation to Ms. Fischer) has disgraced himself with photographs showing him beating a police officer as a militant leftist in the 1970's. Mr. Eichel has been accused of using the air force plane at his disposal for personal flights - charges yet unproven - and Mr. Scharping is facing questions over the exposure of soldiers to depleted uranium in NATO ammunition. Those difficulties have not yet made a significant impact on Schroeder's popularity, but they do provide the Christian Democrat opposition with a variety of new means to attack the chancellor before important regional elections in the middle of March'2001. Previous page > BSE Crisis Timeline (1988-2001) > Page 1, 2, 3 Related links: |
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