GERMANY yesterday ordered the slaughter of 5,200 cattle imported from Britain and Switzerland in an effort to restore consumer confidence following the country's first case of BSE in two years, Denis Staunton writes from Berlin.
The cull falls short of a proposal made at a crisis meeting in Bonn by the Agriculture Minister, Mr Jochen Borchert, to slaughter 3,000 British born cattle and their 7,000 offspring.
The move follows the discovery on Tuesday of a case of BSE in a Galloway calf born in Germany of a British cow. Germany stopped importing cattle from Britain in 1990 and placed previously imported cattle under veterinary observation.
The import ban was extended to Northern Ireland and Switzerland in March last year.
Scientists greeted the new BSE case as evidence that the disease can be transmitted from cow to calf as well as through infected feed.
Dr Thomas Schlicht, a BSE expert at the Federal Institute for Consumer Health Protection in Berlin, warned yesterday that the disease may be transmitted from cow to calf through milk, raising questions about the safety of dairy products.
"We have long believed that cow to calf infection is possible. Now we have been confirmed in this view," he said.