DATE=01/10/01

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=GERMANY / MAD COW (L-ONLY)

NUMBER=2-271210

BYLINE=JONATHAN BRAUDE

DATELINE=BERLIN

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder moved swiftly to reshuffle his cabinet today/Wednesday after the resignation of two ministers over the mishandling of the nation's mad cow disease crisis. As Jonathan Braude reports from Berlin, the new ministers will have to restore the nation's confidence not only in its food supply but also in its government.

TEXT: The resignations came after Germany announced its tenth case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, usually known as BSE or mad cow disease.

Green Party Health Minister Andrea Fischer, and Social Democrat Agriculture Minister Karl-Heinz Funke both stepped down to take responsibility for the muddle that ensued after Germany's first case of the brain-destroying disease cropped up on a farm in November.

In their place, Green Party parliamentary leader Renate Kuenast will take on the farm job - and with it ministerial responsibility for consumer protection. Social Democrat Ulla Schmidt will become health minister.

That the two parties in the ruling coalition have swapped ministries is no coincidence. Previously, consumer protection responsibilities were shared between farming and health. Giving the Greens the new agriculture and consumer protection ministry is meant to demonstrate the German government's new commitment to consumer health and ecologically sound farming.

The Greens have always opposed the intensive factory farming approach to livestock and the unrestrained use of chemicals in crop farming. Now they have the Chancellor's backing for what they call "a new beginning in agriculture." Ms Kuenast made the policy clear in a press conference Wednesday.

///Act Kuenast in German, establish and fade///

Ms Kuenast says she will work to restore consumer trust, ensure the economic future of farming in Germany, and put agriculture on what she calls a new "closer-to-nature" track.

That policy may upset farmers, but analysts say it may boost the fortunes of both governing parties. Their voters are mostly urban. They are said to have lost confidence in the claim that German food is safe and in the Government's ability to handle the crisis.

So far, nobody in Germany is reported to have been infected with the human form of mad cow disease. But consumers have only to look to the people who have already died from the disease in Britain to know they want a change of policy. (Signed)

NEB/JB/GE