2 German Ministers Are Forced to Resign Over ‘Mad Cow’ Crisis

Germany’s “mad cow” crisis felled its first victims Tuesday, as Health Minister Andrea Fischer and Agriculture Minister Karl-Heinz Funke were forced to resign for failing to halt the spread of the disease to this country after at least 80 people had died of it across Europe.

None of the recent cases discovered here has yet been linked to illness in humans, but the shocking revelations that Germany is tainted after years of official assurances to the contrary have shaken public faith in government and in the purity of some of the nation’s favorite foods.

The departures of Fischer, a member of the environmentalist Greens party, and Funke, from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats, are likely to do little to ease the near-hysteria among the public about the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. In fact, the resignations only spotlighted the crisis of confidence afflicting a government that had until recently been basking in popular support for bringing down double-digit unemployment rates and reforming ossified tax and pension systems.

But those pocketbook issues pale by comparison with the reverence Germans reserve for their hearty cuisine, and although pork is more prevalent in the hundreds of sausage types beloved by consumers, there has long been a place at the table for beef roasts and stews as well. However, even the most popular sausages have suffered sales tailspins since Fischer and others warned that some brands might contain beef filler culled from the backbones of slaughtered cattle--the means by which BSE is thought to jump the food chain from cows to humans.

At a news conference called after working hours to announce that she had resigned, Fischer made clear that she had been sacrificed in an attempt to calm the political storm that has been disrupting the country since the first BSE-infected cow was discovered in Germany six weeks ago.

“It certainly seems bizarre to me and my party that a Greens politician is the first made accountable for the catastrophe of industrialized agriculture,” Fischer said in a voice choked with bitterness and threatening tears.

The Greens have long advocated organic and traditional farming practices in contrast to factory-like efforts--widely seen as cruel to livestock and unsanitary--to salvage bone meal and other animal scraps for mixing with fodder.

Although scientists are still researching the connections between BSE-infected meat and the human form of the malady, “new variant” Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, suspicions have focused on the animal products added to feed grain that are mechanically culled from the backbones of slaughtered cattle.

Funke, whose resignation was announced by Schroeder’s office after Fischer made her own departure public, had defended the supplementing of feed with ground-up organs and bone meal from cattle--a common practice among feed producers in Germany even after researchers began linking the animal additives to BSE risks. European Union health and consumer affairs officials had also criticized the 54-year-old Funke, a farmer himself, for failing to heed warnings that Germany was likely to be affected by the BSE outbreak along with Britain and France.

Since the first two of Germany’s nine BSE cases were reported Nov. 24, the government has implemented mandatory testing of all beef cattle older than 30 months at the time of slaughter. Infected animals exposed by what until last month was random sampling have been destroyed, as have other cows of the same herds, but testing remains limited to beef cattle even though animal parts have also been added for years to feed for poultry and other livestock.

At an emergency session of Parliament’s health and agriculture committees Friday, Fischer had urged the leadership to extend mandatory BSE testing to cattle as young as 24 months, after the discovery of Germany’s seventh infected cow--a 28-month-old in the biggest farming state, Bavaria. Funke used the session to urge lawmakers to push for an EU-wide ban on feed that includes animal parts, for tougher food safety inspections and for more government money for research and experiments in organic farming.

Germans and many other Europeans have responded to the crisis by forsaking beef in dramatic fashion. Even in neighboring Poland, where there has yet to be a single BSE case reported, beef sales are down as much as 50% in most stores. In Italy, restaurateurs have been seeking to assure patrons that their meat entrees are BSE-free on the strength of the fact that no Italian cattle have yet been found with the disease. Throughout Europe, food industries dependent on beef sales, like the McDonald’s hamburger chain, have been touting 100% pork alternatives like the new “McFarmer” sandwich.

Most of the 80 deaths tied to BSE have occurred in Britain, where the mad cow scare began in earnest about four years ago. But human infections of the fatal disease that destroys the brain have more recently been discovered in France, where dozens of cases of BSE were found in livestock last year and triggered public outcries and a crisis in the meat industry. Five cases of infected livestock have also been discovered in Spain recently, and Danish authorities reported their third tainted cow just a few hours before the political fallout hit Germany.

There was no immediate word on who would replace either Fischer or Funke, although the environment minister for North Rhine-Westphalia, Baerbel Hoehn, and Deputy Agriculture Minister Martin Wille were most often mentioned by political commentators as likely choices.

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Times researchers Maria de Cristofaro in Rome, Ela Kasprzycka in Warsaw and Reane Oppl in Bonn contributed to this report.