Schroeder replaces BSE row ministers

BERLIN, Germany -- Germany's Chancellor has appointed the co-leader of the Green party as agriculture minister following resignations over the mad cow disease crisis.

Gerhard Schroeder named Renate Kuenast as agriculture minister with new responsibilities for consumer protection, replacing Karl-Heinz Funke, an old ally of Schroeder and a fellow Social Democrat who quit on Tuesday.

The crisis was sparked by opposition charges of government inaction about the safety of sausages as well as the discovery of several cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) among German cattle.

In Wednesday's reshuffle, he also appointed Ulla Schmidt, a senior SPD parliamentarian, to the health portfolio vacated by Green politician Andrea Fischer the day before.

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"The BSE crisis has made it compellingly clear that we have to make several organisational, and not just personnel, changes," Schroeder told a news conference on Wednesday.

He said the agriculture ministry would be reorganised and improved with consumer protection becoming a key aspect of the revised ministry.

Earlier, Kuenast called for agriculture to be brought "close to nature," but warned there were no quick answers to the mad cow crisis.

The Greens, the junior partner in the governing coalition, are seen as having have strong stands favouring consumer protection and organic farming.

"In the next few months, we have to determine all the things that were done wrong in the recent years, and systematically develop concepts for what should be done differently," Kuenast said.

Farm lobbyists were also urging leaders to meet on Wednesday to discuss the crisis and the effects the resignations could have on farmers.

Meanwhile, Belgian authorities said a new round of testing for mad cow disease suggested the rate of infection in the country could be five times higher than previously thought.

Officials examined meat from more than 2700 cattle aged more than 30 months and found 14 suspected cases of the disease -- pointing to an infection rate of one in every 200 animals.

'Friendly atmosphere'

Fischer, from Germany's environmentalist Greens party, admitted the government's handling of the outbreak of BSE had done nothing to restore consumer confidence.

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."

She said she was resigning because the public had lost faith in her ministry, but also said the real fault lay with modern factory farming methods.

Funke, meanwhile, said his resignation had been tendered in a "friendly atmosphere."

Returning to Berlin after a meeting with farmers in his home state of Lower Saxony, he said: "I want to clear the way for a new beginning in agriculture politics.

"I have been forced to acknowledge that the farming policies I consider to be appropriate were no longer supported by a majority in the coalition," Funke said.

It had been thought that BSE was not present in Germany, but 10 confirmed cases have been found since November.

Fischer had faced growing opposition calls to resign after admitting that a warning by government experts about sausage industry practices "apparently lay around for 10 days" in her ministry.

"Everyone should take responsibility for their own mistakes," Fischer said at the news conference, adding that a decision on her successor had not been made.

Criticism from European Union officials last month forced Fischer to call on food producers to withdraw sausages from stores suspected of containing possibly infected beef.

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

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.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.