Word: nast
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...Until two months ago, the 45-year-old was co-chair of the environment-friendly Green party, the junior coalition partner in the government. The daughter of a car mechanic and a hospital aide, Künast overcame her parents' wish that she drop out of school in the ninth grade to learn a trade. Instead, she went to a technical high school and then to university, where she earned a law degree. With her punk hair style, she seems the embodiment of trendy Berlin, a world apart from the farms of rural Germany. The leftist taz newspaper described...
...tell what people want to hear. In her maiden speech to parliament, Künast proposed increasing organic farming, which avoids pesticides, drugs and other manmade chemicals and feeds, from 2.5% of agriculture to 20% in 10 years, thus creating a common front with two other female Agriculture Ministers, Sweden's Margareta Winberg and Denmark's Ritt Bjerregaard. Künast proposed changing Germany's complex system of meat labeling into just two categories: organically grown food and products that meet minimum-quality levels. A poll taken after she had been in the job just one month showed...
...While her overall popularity is high, German farmers, even organic ones, have reservations. "We're very happy with what she says, less happy with what she's doing," says Thomas Dosch, president of Bioland, the largest association of organic farmers in Germany. Their complaint: Künast has done little to reform the Agriculture Ministry, which stayed in Bonn when the government moved to Berlin. As a result, Dosch says, the ministry remains dominated by old-style officials who give short shrift to new farming methods...
...that she hasn't been busy. Last week, Künast asked local governments to revoke the export permits of two slaughterhouses after it emerged that they had shipped to Britain beef products containing material linked to the spread of bse. She came under fire from Brussels for not closing down the abattoirs entirely...
...nast also took flak for opposing the mass killing of animals to help support beef prices during the bse crisis. But after being lobbied by farmers, suffering from a 50% collapse of beef consumption in just two months, and officials from other countries, she reluctantly agreed to the slaughter. "We were relieved," said Michael Lohse of the German Farmers' Association. "The situation in the stables is a catastrophe...