The German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, replaced two ministers and announced new food safety measures yesterday to restore consumer confidence in German beef and credibility in his government, both laid low by the mishandling of the BSE crisis.
The Green Party co-leader, Ms Renate Kunast, will head a newly expanded Agriculture Ministry, with new powers to protect consumers and to encourage alternatives to intensive farming which Mr Schroder said is to blame for BSE.
"It's high time that we changed the course of agriculture. . . We want food safety through appropriate farming methods that are good for the environment," he said at a press conference yesterday.
Ms Kunast, who replaces a Social Democrat, Mr Karl-Heinz Funke, said she wanted a "return to natural farming".
"In the next few months, we have to determine all the things that were done wrong in the recent years and systematically develop concepts for what should be done differently," she said.
A leading Social Democrat, Ms Ulla Schmidt, was appointed to the health portfolio vacated by Ms Andrea Fischer of the Green Party.
The new appointments retain the balance of ministers in the coalition between the Social Democrats and Greens, but reverse control over the two ministries.
On Tuesday, the outgoing health minister, Ms Andrea Fischer, said she "regretted" mistakes she had made and acknowledged that these mistakes had shaken the confidence of consumers in the government's ability to solve the BSE crisis.
Less than two hours later, the Agriculture Minister, Mr Funke, announced his resignation, saying he wanted to "clear the way for a new beginning". He had come under pressure since he announced Germany was BSE free only days before the discovery of the first of 10 cases of BSE in German-born cows last November.
Neither of the two departing ministers admitted being sacked but a terse statement from Mr Schroder left little doubt that the Chancellor had intervened. "Only 48 hours previously, Schroder said he saw no reason for any resignations. The other ministers in his team would do well to heed this," said the Berlin tabloid, BZ.
"It looks like Schroder is once again losing his touch and looking more like the fumbling leader he was two years ago," said the conservative Die Welt, while the mass-circulation newspaper Bild dubbed the resignations "Mad Minister Disease".
Mr Schroder has now lost seven of the 16 ministers he appointed on taking office two years ago.
His two new ministers face the difficult task of regaining the trust of the German public. The appointment of the ecologically minded Ms Kunast will go some way to putting the public at ease, though her call for "natural farming" methods will be viewed with suspicion by large farmers.
Mr Schroder's Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, experienced difficulties of his own last week. He was forced to make a public apology after a magazine published photos of him beating up a policeman in the 1970s when he was an active member of Germany's militant left-wing movement.