Brussels Spares Germany's Organic Farms
June 12, 2002
Germany has avoided an Europe-wide ban on its organic food exports after the European Commission ruled on Tuesday that Berlin had done enough to protect consumers from contaminated products from its organic farms.
The decision comes a week after Germany's agricultural ministry discovered feed containing the banned herbicide nitrofen had been delivered to 100 farms producing eggs and poultry.
German authorities moved quickly following the discovery, tracing the source to a grain store in the former East Germany and ordering the slaughter of thousands of chickens who may have been contaminated by the feed. They also stopped production in 93 egg and chicken farms.
The scandal nevertheless caused concern across Europe's agricultural landscape.
Tremors across the continent
Officials said that German organic poultry producers in Lower Saxony sold meat from some 100,000 contaminated birds to buyers in ten German states as well as to Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria between November 2001 and May 2002.
EU countries like Belgium passed emergency laws to stop the import of German organic products. French farmers went on alert after a distributor said that more than 6 tons of possibly contaminated feed imported from Germany had been shipped out.
An EU-wide ban would have meant trouble for the country's organic farms and dealt a further blow to the country's pro-organic Agriculture Minister Renate Künast.
Künast was pleased with the decision out of Brussels, seeing it as confirmation her ministry handled the problem effectively.
Belgium announced after the decision that it would lift the ban on German organic products it had imposed earlier.
Still a problem
The scandal remains a cause of concern within Germany.
Last week officials admitted that meat and eggs produced by the affected organic farms had probably already been consumed.
To make matters worse, Künast said last week that the Malchin store may have also distributed the tainted feed to conventional producers, which could add greatly to the amount of contaminated produce.