New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark is demanding an apology from the Germany after a statutory body claimed in a consumer pamphlet that the country is home to sheep scrapie, the fatal sheep disease from the spongiform encephalopathy family that also includes BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy).
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The accusations are contained in a pamphlet on BSE made by the German Central Marketing Agency (CMA) that the statutory body is delivering to every home in Germany. New Zealand officials confirmed that the country has never had a case of scrapie.
Agriculture minister Jim Sutton has also demanded an explanation from Gerd Sonnleitner, president of the German Farmers’ Union and member of the CMA, who is due in New Zealand today (13 March).
It is currently too early to tell how much damage has been done to New Zealand’s NZ$185m meat trade with Germany, but Sutton believes that the misinformation is almost certainly evidence of commercial sabotage. German consumers are already concerned about consumption of meat after mad cow disease and foot and mouth disease scares in home grown herds. There are now fears that imported meat imports will plummet.
“It’s a stupid thing to do, and in most civilised countries a criminal thing to do,” he argued. “This is absolutely outrageous – firstly to liken scrapie to BSE, and then suggest we have it.”
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By GlobalDataThe New Zealand government believes that a full retraction to everyone who received the pamphlet is a minimum requirement on behalf of the German government.
