German agriculture minister Renate Kunast is to mastermind the launch of a Food Standards Agency based on the British model. Speaking at a conference on the future of European Agriculture, she said: "The BSE outbreak has shown us where carelessness leads to. "We plan to follow the example of the UK and set up a German food standards agency in the next year." The new German agency will have a similar remit to that of the UK's FSA, promoting consumer education and high food safety standards. As part of the new commitment to consumer education, Germany is to put nutrition on the timetable in schools, right down to kindergarten level. Green party politician Kunast also revealed that Germany planned a new system of food labelling to promote transparency "from stable to table". Kunast said: "What is on the inside must appear on the outside, and what is on the outside must be clear and easy to understand." She said Germany would launch two new food quality labels, one for organic produce and one for food produced by conventional, but ecologically friendly techniques. And a further label for meat will reassure consumers its quality was trustworthy in the light of BSE. Kunast said Germany is campaigning for a new approach to agriculture across the EU, with the emphasis on quality rather than quantity ­ with a broader role for organic farming. She said: "We want to provide consumers with information on organic farming ­ it accounts for 3% of output at the moment, and we want to raise that to 20% in the next 10 years." She said Germany also planned to conduct an analysis into the relative economic costs of vaccinating to prevent foot and mouth disease, in terms of the effect on imports, weighed up against the costs of policy of slaughter and its knock-on effects on tourism and other industries. {{NEWS }}