Mad
Cow and German Ministers
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Part
3: German Cabinet Woes
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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:
Bovine
Spongiform Encephalopathy
Bovine
Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)
Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease
Health Care in
Germany
Mad Cow Disease
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