Fracking could ruin German beer industry, brewers tell Angela Merkel

The Brauer-Bund beer association is worried that fracking for shale gas, which involves pumping water and chemicals at high pressure into the ground, could pollute water used for brewing and break a 500-year-old industry rule on water purity.

"The water has to be pure and more than half Germany's brewers have their own wells which are situated outside areas that could be protected under the government's current planned legislation on fracking," said a Brauer-Bund spokesman.

Given resistance from opposition parties which could block the law in the upper house of parliament, it is unlikely that a law on fracking will be passed before an election in September.