German minister quits over BSE crisis

BERLIN, Germany -- German health minister Andrea Fischer -- under fire over the mad cow disease scare in the country -- has resigned from the government.

And Agriculture Minister Karl-Heinz Funke is also to resign, Reuters news agency said quoting government sources.

The two have been under pressure over their handling of the mad cow disease scare in Germany.

Fischer admitted the government's handling of the outbreak of BSE had done nothing to restore consumer confidence.

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She said: "I hope that by resigning I can contribute to an end of the revelations and help promote a return to business as usual."

It had been thought that the brain wasting disease was not present in Germany, but several cases have been found recently.

Last week a series of measures aimed at cracking down on the disease were announced, but were withdrawn following an inter-departmental row in which Funke said he had not been consulted over the plans.

On Monday, it was announced that new plans would be drawn up.

Fischer, 40, a member of the environmentalist Greens party, announced her decision in a snap news conference on Tuesday.

The Greens are junior partners in a coalition dominated by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's centre-left Social Democrats.

Schroeder has defended Fischer and his Social Democrat agriculture minister Funke over their handling of the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), discovered in several German cattle after comprehensive testing began last autumn.

But he has admitted Germany had been complacent in its approach to the disease and had for too long assumed its farming methods would spare it from BSE.

The dramatic developments in Germany came as the mad cow disease scare continued to send shockwaves around Europe.

New testing for the disease in Belgium has revealed a suspected infection rate five times higher than expected, it was announced.

After tests on meat from cattle aged over 30 months, the Belgian Food Safety Agency said it had detected 14 suspected cases of the disorder indicating that one in every 200 cows was infected.

Meanwhile, France's beef tests have yielded a possible case of the deadly illness in an animal born after 1996, when tougher controls were imposed to try to halt its spread, an official said on Tuesday.

The discovery, if confirmed, could lend support to the theory that animal feed is not the only means of transmitting mad cow disease and might mean that the epidemic may be around for much longer than believed until now.

Catherine Geslain-Laneelle, general director of food at the French farm ministry, said the new testing scheme had uncovered a positive case of mad cow disease in an animal born in March 1998.

A sample has been sent to a laboratory operated by the AFSSA food safety agency in Lyon for confirmation.

"For the moment we are not drawing any conclusions," she said, adding that she expected to have a final confirmation from Lyon within seven days.

The discovery of a possible case of BSE in an animal born after 1996 is the second such finding in France.

In Belgium authorities were disturbed by the preliminary results of testing undertaken as part of European Union measures to deal with the mad cow crisis.

"Before we started this testing, the scientists here in Belgium thought that one case in 1,000 would be positive," a spokeswoman for the health ministry said.

BSE fears reach north

A second round of testing on three of the animals showed a negative result. All the findings are subject to a full three rounds of tests before final confirmation.

The final results are expected by Thursday, the spokeswoman said. Only 19 cases of mad cow disease have previously been confirmed in Belgium.

Scientists believe eating products from animals infected with BSE causes variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the fatal, brain-wasting human form of mad cow disease.

At least 80 people in Britain and two in France have died from vCJD. Meanwhile, the reach of mad cow disease is extending into northern Europe with Denmark detecting a new case. It is the third case of BSE found in Denmark in the past decade. BSE fears have also extended to Sweden despite no cases being recorded there.

Many Swedes intend to eat less meat, following the example of Prime Minister Goran Persson who recently voiced doubts about a carnivorous diet, an opinion poll published on Tuesday suggested.

Reuters contributed to this report.