Dear Chancellor Khol: Keep up the ban on British beef, a food safety adviser tells the German Chancellor. That way we might learn the truth about 'mad cow' disease

I note that your health minister, Horst Seehofer, is keeping his options open on a unilateral ban on the import of British beef. I thought you might like to know, therefore, that there are a number of us in England who support his stance.

This is not to say that I actually believe there is any great risk to health from eating British beef. I am not convinced that BSE in beef is transmissible to humans: after all, the incidence of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease in Germany is about the same as it is in the UK, and there are no signs here that we are about to suffer the much-feared epidemic of CJD. If BSE were transmissible, we surely should have been seeing some signs of it by now, after nearly eight years of the cattle epidemic.

The real reason we would like your health minister to take action is to force the issue into the open, for there are many of us who believe our Ministry of Agriculture has not been telling the whole story.

We are not convinced by the ministry's 'infected feed' theory, and suspect that there might be other more plausible causal factors, such as the use of organo-phosphorus pesticides on cattle and animal feed.

Our suspicions have been bolstered by the incredibly maladroit handling of the salmonella in eggs issue, where our ministry launched a ruinous compulsory slaughter programme which cost taxpayers more than pounds 6m, only to wind it up in disarray after it had no effect on salmonella poisoning in humans. We hear that your country is now in the throes of its own 'egg scare' and would caution you not to follow Britain's example. Even our very own agriculture minister, Mrs Gillian Shephard, admits to having over-reacted at a select committee review recently.

We would hate to see your own industry saddled by unworkable laws based on an incomplete appreciation of the facts.

It may seem a contradiction, therefore, if we tell you that a German import ban on our beef would be welcome. If it brought the matter before the European Court it would create a useful forum, providing an opportunity to air all the arguments. In the short term, of course, this might create some problems, but they would be minor - we no longer export substantial quantities of beef to your country. Against this, the possibility of settling the issue once and for all is highly attractive.

The situation here is so bad that even if the ministry were telling the truth, few would believe it. What would in effect be an independent enquiry, spearheaded by German scientists, would clear the air.

Action by your Mr Seehofer would, I believe, do more in the long run for consumer confidence than any number of protestations by Gillian Shephard.

Her constant repetition of her officials' mantra, that there are no scientific grounds for banning beef, lacks credibility. In other words, Mr Kohl, more power to your elbow.

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