BERLIN — The German government held crisis talks on Thursday to discuss new measures aimed at maintaining consumer confidence in sausages amid growing fears the national dish was not safe from mad-cow disease.
At the height of the rush to stock Christmas tables, butchers reported that panic buying was causing shortages and squeezing up prices for poultry and other meat types.
The Health Ministry warned the public this week not to eat certain types of sausage containing meat from the backbones and other body parts of cattle seen as carrying a high risk of transmission of the disease to humans.
A ministry spokeswoman said it was now assessing with Justice Ministry officials whether it could order supermarkets and shops to take such products off the shelves until the precise health risk had been established.
"We are studying the legal basis for issuing a decree recalling these products," she said. Such a decree would not need parliamentary approval and could take effect in a matter of days.
The German government is facing mounting criticism that it has failed to react seriously enough to the threat of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The first case of the disease here was confirmed in November.
Separately, German officials confirmed two new BSE cases on Thursday, bringing the total to five since nationwide testing began a few weeks ago.
Health officials in the southern state of Bavaria said tests on two animals from the Pilsach and Weilheim districts proved positive. Four cases in less than a week have now surfaced in the Alpine region once thought to offer Germany's highest quality meat.
Neighboring Austria said it had banned all imports of German cattle and beef to minimize the risk of contamination after its big neighbor reported the new cases.
While German sausages are predominantly made from pork, many of the cheaper varieties often include meat mechanically recovered from the backbones and other parts of cattle.
A range of meat is consumed at German tables at Christmas, from sausages on Christmas Eve to richer fare including goose, turkey and beef on Christmas Day.
"Demand for poultry has significantly risen because of the BSE cases," Gerd Haerig of the Federation of German Food Retailers told Reuters.
"Many butchers are finding it harder and harder to keep up with demand," he said, estimating that poultry prices had risen 10 percent in the last few weeks.
Fish prices were also rising steadily, he noted.
Health Minister Andrea Fischer, who until late on Wednesday was insisting sausages posed no health risk, has stressed that the new advice to consumers is a purely precautionary measure.
She said the sale of such meat had already been banned in October but was anxious to ensure products manufactured before then were not still on sale.
"We have to eliminate every real risk," Fischer told ARD television, noting that these were the same products that Germans have been eating for years unaware of any possible risk to health.
No cases of the human equivalent of BSE, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), have yet been confirmed in Germany. Two people are suspected to be suffering from it.