At first glance, it looks like humanitarianism on the cheap: Send the hundreds of tons of beef that are being discarded in Germany to North Korea, where millions of people are reportedly on the brink of starvation. But it is not that simple: Germany's cattle are being killed because they might have bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, and the cull is designed to eliminate any chance that they might transmit Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal degenerative disease for which there is no cure. The question raises serious moral issues that go beyond a mere balancing of risks.
Germany has agreed to participate in a European Union program to kill hundreds of thousands of cattle in an attempt to boost consumer confidence in European beef, which has been drastically eroded in recent months as a result of BSE fears. Although there were just 29 cases of BSE in the country through last year, German butchers killed only about half the cows they had killed the previous year because of the drop in the demand for beef.
In addition to reducing the risk of BSE transmission, the program is designed to prop up beef prices, a fact that has outraged animal-rights activists. They have threatened to sue the German farm minister for cruelty to animals. Others argue that there is no need to waste the beef; the German aid organization Cap Anamur has suggested that the beef be donated to North Korea to help fight the famine in that country.