GERMANY insisted yesterday that the ban on British beef exports must remain indefinitely amid calls from some federal states for the ban to be extended to milk products and lamb.
The German agriculture minister, Mr Jochen Borchert, met health experts from Germany's 16 states yesterday to work out a joint strategy for combatting BSE. Mr Borchert said afterwards that the health of consumers was his government's paramount concern and that Bonn would resist any relaxation of the ban on British beef until the danger of BSE has been eliminated.
Ms Baerbel Hoehn, environment minister of North Rhine Westphalia, suggested yesterday that British milk products might be banned too in the light of a report last week that BSE could be passed to calves through mothers' milk.
"I think it was a mistake for the EU to respond to Britain blockade policy by relaxing its export ban. We should seriously consider if we should not restore the stricter import ban that used to apply, or whether we should not extend it to milk products," she said.
Her counterpart in Rhineland Palatinate, Ms Klaudia Martini, called at the weekend for a ban on the export of British lamb and for the re imposition of the ban on British beef products.
German farmers vented their anger on Friday over the drastic fall in demand for beef since the BSE crisis began by burning the Union Jack and shouting "England out of the EU". Three out of every four German farmers have been affected by the crisis, although there have been only a handful of BSE cases in Germany.
Irish beef sales in Germany have been badly hit following reports in the news media of cattle being smuggled into the Republic from Northern Ireland. Irish butter accounts for more than 10 per cent of the German market, but these sales could suffer too if the food scare spreads to milk products.
Consumer confidence in beef received a further knock yesterday with the news that German butchers have been selling meat from cows treated with the banned antibiotic, chloramphenicol.
According to a report by the German Institute for Consumer Protection and Veterinary Medicine published in yesterday's Der Spiegel, traces of the drug can lead to serious bone marrow illnesses in humans.
