Germany hopes to avert EU ban on organic produce
Date: 10-Jun-02
Country: GERMANY
Author: Holger Hansen
German weekly Der Spiegel reported on the weekend that the EU Commission would consider a ban on Monday because it felt it had not been properly informed about a scare over chicken feed tainted with the potentially carcinogenic herbicide nitrofen.
Deputy Farm Minister Alexander Mueller told a news conference that new information suggested that contrary to earlier fears, there was only one source of tainted grain and said Germany had the situation under control.
Mueller said he would send detailed plans to the EU Commission yesterday on what measures Germany was taking to contain the crisis. He denied Brussels was considering a general ban on German organic produce, but rather just on products from farms that have already been shut because of the scare.
Until the news of the contamination broke late last month, organic farming had been promoted by the German government - in which Greens are the junior partners - and favoured by consumers, worried by past food scares over mad cow and foot and mouth diseases.
Officials have tracked the source of contaminated chicken feed to a grain store in Malchin, which in the days of communist East Germany was used to hold pesticides and weedkiller, residues of which had tainted wheat stored there.
Some 93 organic farms producing chickens, eggs and other poultry have been closed, most which took delivery of tainted feed. Hundreds of thousands of chickens that ate the feed are being slaughtered.
ALREADY IN THE FOOD CHAIN
Contaminated meat and eggs produced by the organic farms have probably already been eaten, a Farm Ministry spokesman in Lower Saxony state admitted last week.
German organic poultry producers in Lower Saxony, the centre of the affair, sold meat from about 100,000 tainted birds to buyers in 10 German states and to Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria between November 2001 and May 2002, officials say.
Nitrofen is banned throughout the European Union, but German officials say it is only a serious danger to health when consumed over long periods.
Mueller said that after regional officials suggested there might be another source of nitrofen than the Malchin store, the EU believed that the crisis might be getting out of control.
Mueller said regional agriculture officials would hold an emergency meeting yesterday to review the situation and said he hoped he would be able to pursuade EU Health Commissioner David Byrne on Monday not to ban affected organic products.
"Everywhere where there is the suspicion of nitrofen contamination that cannot be explained, the states must take hard and effective action," Mueller said.
Der Spiegel magazine said an EU-wide ban, which would also forbid sales in Germany itself, could bankrupt many organic farms, because it could take months to lift.
Amid mounting concern in Europe, Belgium announced on Thursday it would start testing all cereal and livestock imports from Germany for nitrofen immediately.
Swiss authorities on Wednesday impounded about 400 tonnes of imported German feed wheat for precautionary tests.