‘Mad Cow’ Scare Has Europeans Thinking Green

For the first time since he began raising cattle in an ecological idyll, Karl-Heinz Manzke looks set to turn a profit.

Suddenly, after a decade of mounting personal debt and public indifference toward foods raised in harmony with Mother Nature, the beef and veal Manzke raises in the rolling countryside along the Polish border are in demand by more than just the politically correct and environmentally trendy.

Europe’s “mad cow” scare has propelled organic farming from an obscure niche to an oasis of perceived safety. Many consumers fear that mass-produced meat is more vulnerable to a fatal, brain-destroying disease that scientists believe is linked to a similar illness in humans.

With sales of eco-products up 60% throughout the European Union while conventionally produced beef has lost 80% of its market, Manzke plans to add an additional 150 heifers to his 450 cows as soon as he can acquire land from nearby farms that are going under.

But even organic farmers such as Manzke doubt their ability to feed the masses, or the wisdom of trying. They concede that too little is known about the cause or spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE--commonly called “mad cow” disease--or about how it jumps the species chain and infects humans for them to be certain that ecologically correct operations are unaffected.

The psychological scars and economic damage following recent discoveries of BSE-infected cattle in France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Denmark and Italy extend far beyond the meat industry and Europe’s farmers. The outbreaks of BSE have shattered public confidence in many foods and in governments’ ability to ensure consumer safety.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has put this country’s farmers on notice that a thorough reform of agriculture is planned and will be conducted with more concern for the consumer and the environment than for the interests of the agro-industrial lobby.

Today, though, only about 2% of Europe’s food is produced on organic farms, due largely to an EU subsidy structure that disproportionately rewards mass production. In the case of farms affected by BSE, those with the biggest herds stand to gain the most in compensation if, as expected, the alliance orders the slaughter and incineration of 2 million cows to remove the surplus now depressing the market.

Germany’s newly appointed minister for consumer protection, food and agriculture, Renate Kuenast, has set a goal of increasing the share of organic farming to 10% by 2010, along with expanding research into its safety and that of various pesticides and chemical additives. Going her one better, the EU commissioner for agriculture, Franz Fischler, says the share could reach 20%.

But with organic products costing at least 30% more than foods raised with industrial methods because of the extra care and feeding required, no one is certain how much more consumers will be willing to pay--or for how long. Even conventional foods are likely to become more costly now that BSE testing of older cows, which are thought to be more susceptible to the disease, will add to the price of production. Funds will also have to be found from state and EU budgets to compensate farmers whose herds must be destroyed.

Dairy Products Can’t Be Proclaimed Safe

The beef crisis also has cast suspicion on other foods and pitted producers against one another in a continent-wide blame game. Kuenast has acknowledged that dairy products cannot be proclaimed BSE-free with so little scientific evidence to go on. The quality of pork from Bavaria is under suspicion following news that farmers in the southern German state have been treating pig feed with antibiotics that are banned because of the dangers they pose to humans.

In Italy, police have confiscated stashes of illegally imported beef in several cities, the first evidence that the scare has spawned a new trade for the criminal underworld.

French relatives of those who have died from BSE’s human form--Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD--are suing British authorities for continuing to export suspect animal feed for years after ground animal parts in the feed were linked to the spread of BSE.

The atmosphere of panic and suspicion has spread beyond Europe. Countries as far away as South Korea and Malaysia have outlawed beef imports from EU states, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is pondering a ban on blood donations from anyone who has spent a total of 10 years or more in European countries hit by BSE.

Health officials and consumer advocates expect food safety worries to ease with time. But they say anger and distrust will persist for years because of lessons not learned earlier.

Britain, where more than 80 people have died from CJD and 180,000 head of cattle were found to be infected before testing was halted and all older cows slaughtered, banned fodder containing animal parts in 1988. Still, the country continued to export feed that couldn’t be sold legally in Britain. In France, Germany and other European states where BSE has struck, feed producers continued to add bone meal and other animal parts to boost the fodder’s protein content until October, regardless of scientists’ strong suspicions that the additives were the vehicles for infection.

Government leaders throughout the EU are being held accountable for failing to recognize the dangers. Germany’s health and agriculture ministers were forced to resign this month for allowing the disease to spread to this country, and Bavarian Agriculture Secretary Barbara Stamm was sacked Tuesday over the pig feed scandal.

But the “mad cow” crisis may have a silver lining: It is prompting agricultural reforms.

“Never was there such a great opportunity to end the squandering of taxes,” the cerebral German weekly Die Zeit contended in a recent edition, noting that for Germany alone, “Brussels [the EU headquarters], Berlin and the state governments donate nearly $7 billion a year to fewer than 500,000 farmers.”

The $500 per head that the EU pays farmers in compensation for cattle destroyed as a market-correcting measure may be more money than they would get by selling the meat, as prices have been driven down by evaporating demand.

Kuenast, a lawyer and an influential member of the environmentalist Greens party that shares power with Schroeder’s Social Democrats, made it one of her first orders of business to urge an overhaul of subsidies in order to aid organic farmers.

While consumer advocates also see an opportunity for reforming agriculture, they worry about the psychological effects of a prolonged food safety debate.

“If this crisis atmosphere extends too far, people will develop a sense of fatalism, that it doesn’t matter what is done because we’re all going to die anyway,” says Edda Mueller, a scientist who heads the German Assn. for Consumer Protection. “It is more productive to give people a feeling that something can be done to improve the situation.”

But she accuses consumers of having shirked their responsibilities by choosing cheaper foods over the organically grown alternatives, fostering a market oriented toward quantity rather than quality. Almost 98% of meat sold in Germany is from industrialized farms.

“The average German household spends only about 12% to 13% of its budget on food, which is far less than in other countries,” says Mueller. “Germans have other priorities, like their homes, a nice car and the ability to travel. They need to better develop their culinary interests.”

Advocates of more considerate relations between man and nature argue that there are alternatives between the extremes of the agro-industry and the purists who reject all use of fertilizers, pesticides and mechanization.

About 200 small and medium-sized enterprises belong to Germany’s Neuland food production concern, which is dedicated to humane animal treatment, says Heidemarie Klingbeil, an agronomist who heads the natural farming association. Neuland associates must allow their cattle and poultry to graze on open ranges.

“For decades, we’ve been raping the land and torturing the animals, and now nature is striking back,” Klingbeil says. “What is happening in agriculture today is nothing short of perverse. We’re now talking about taking money from taxpayers to destroy meat from cows raised the wrong way while millions of people in the world are starving.”

Resolving the BSE crisis and reforming agriculture are tasks best accomplished on a Europe-wide basis, farmers and consumers agree. But the two-tiered nature of agrarian regulation, split between individual nations and the EU, allows politicians to deflect responsibility.

Heinz Christian Baer, head of the farmers association in Hesse state, which is home to half of Germany’s 270,000 cattle and dairy farms, accuses Schroeder of vilifying big agricultural operations and setting unrealistic goals for organic production.

“The notion of producing 20% of our food on eco-farms is out of the question, not because of the farmers’ preferences but because of those of the consumer,” Baer says. “Once the crisis abates, people will go back to buying conventionally produced meat instead of expensive eco-products.”

‘Meat Is Safer Today Than It Has Ever Been’

Despite the panic, some officials continue to caution against overreaction.

“Meat is safer today than it has ever been in the past,” insisted Umberto Veronesi, an oncologist, a vegetarian and Italy’s health minister, at a news conference after his country’s first case of BSE was detected.

Even the practitioners of environmentally sensitive farming say they fear that emotional reactions are fleeting and that consumers will resume their disregard for the indelicacies of farming once BSE is eradicated.

“I won’t damn the mass production of meat--we all have our roles to play in feeding the world. We just need reasonable controls and standards to prevent endangering the environment or consumers,” says Manzke, the beef and veal farmer, who has visited cattle operations in the American Midwest and found the mass-scale agribusiness there even more daunting.

“People want products they can trust because they know where they were grown and they know something about the people who raised them,” he says. “If anything good can be said to come out of this crisis, maybe it will be to force more regionalization.”

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Times researchers Janet Stobart in London, Achrene Sicakyuz in Paris and Maria De Cristofaro in Rome contributed to this report.