To Greener Pastures

With foot-and-mouth disease creating Europe's second agriculture crisis of the year, Renate Künast, Germany's new Minister for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture, is getting some quick in-job training. Fresh from ordering the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of animals in the "mad cow" scare, Künast has been forced to authorize more killings — this time of livestock imported from Britain as a precaution against foot-and-mouth disease. Künast is a member of the Green party, and some Greens complain that her large-scale slaughter of animals — when only a few are sick — is wasteful.

Künast's predecessor as Agriculture...