Food industry association BVE has warned that the mad cow crisis may wreck last year’s improved 3.2% sales growth on all foods.


“The existence of enterprises and employment levels in the meat processing industry are at great risk,” BVE said in its annual report. It added that as many as 40,000 jobs out of a total 112,000 in the meat processing sector were at risk after demand for beef fell by 67%, and for meat in by 24%.


BVE said that last year food sales rose by 3.2% to 235.5bn marks (US$112.4bn), of which domestic sales were 192.6bn marks and exports 42.8bn marks.


BVE represents more than 5,000 mostly medium-sized food firms.

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