German food book

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The German Food Book ( DLMB ) is a collection of guidelines in which the production, properties and characteristics of food are described. It is drawn up by the German Food Book Commission in several specialist committees and published by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL). The legal basis is § 15 and § 16 of the Food, Consumer Goods and Feed Code (LFGB) . Despite the name, the German Food Book is not and never was a coherent book, but new and changed guidelines will be published in the Federal Gazette after their adoptionpublished (most recently BAnz AT 01/27/2015 B1 ). However, printed editions of the current guidelines have appeared several times at Behr’s .

The food book is not a legal norm or regulation , but an orientation aid for the trade in and labeling of food. It supplements the legal norms, has the character of an objectified expert opinion and is subject to judicial review. The Ministry characterizes the legal status of the Guidelines as follows: "They bring to general public perception is that the usual trade description in terms of food labeling regulations (LMKV) expressed. They are the primary interpretation aid for answering the question of whether there is a misleading within the meaning of the provisions of food law. "

The model for the German Food Book was the Austrian Codex Alimentarius Austriacus, first published in 1891, and the German Food Book from 1905–1922. The international food standard Codex Alimentarius published by the FAO is taken into account when developing the guiding principles .

German Food Book Commission

According to §§ 15 and 16 LFGB, the German Food Book Commission (DLMBK or DLBK) is responsible for the content of the food book, whose work and composition is regulated in § 16 LFGB and its rules of procedure. It is a body of representatives from the four interest groups science, food monitoring , consumers and the food industry . Science is represented in the appointment period 2009-2015 (actually until 2014, extended by one year due to an ongoing evaluation by the commission), for example, by university professors from the fields of food chemistry, nutritional science, food and business law, food monitoring by employees of state laboratories and Veterinary inspection offices, the consumer community through representatives of the consumer centers and the Stiftung Warentest , the economy through the employees of the business associations such as the Food Association Germany , the German Agricultural Society , the Federal Association of Natural Foods Natural Goods or the farmers' association . During this appointment period, Birgit Rehlender is the chairperson, and will be an employee of Stiftung Warentest until June 30, 2020. The Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture always appoints the members of the commission for a period of five years, appoints a presidium made up of a chairman and his deputy, issues the rules of procedure, bears the costs and provides a secretariat, but is not on the commission itself constantly represented and not authorized to issue instructions to it. However, it has the right to send representatives to meetings of the Commission and to be heard at any time.

The guiding principles are drawn up in specialist committees, which in turn are made up of equal numbers of representatives from the four named interest groups. If a committee of experts has agreed on a draft, “affected groups” of interest groups and the federal government not belonging to the commission are informed of this and have the opportunity to submit their objections to the commission within four weeks, although they are not binding on the work of the commission are. New guidelines and changes to existing guidelines are decided by the entire commission - not just the competent technical committee - at a plenary meeting. According to § 16 LFGB, the commission should in principle decide unanimously on the guiding principles. Unanimity refers to the members who are present or represented at the plenary session; in addition, those who agree must make up more than three quarters of the entire commission. If a unanimous decision is not reached, a second meeting is convened, during which a unanimous decision is no longer required.

The meetings of the commission and the specialist committees take place in camera, and the members are bound to secrecy about the content (with the exception of the drafts of the guiding principles, which are sent to the bodies concerned for comment). In 2010 the chairman announced that “progress reports” should be published in the future. In fact, the then Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection published a number of progress reports from 2010 and 2011 on its website, but did not continue this practice in the following years (status at the end of 2013).

Guiding principles

The German Food Book divides the guiding principles according to product groups into 21 guiding principle chapters, which are elaborated and updated by 7 specialist committees of the Food Book Commission and published independently of one another (as of 2013). These are the following product groups:

Meat and meat products (Technical Committee 1):

Fish and fish products (Technical Committee 2):

Fats / oils, delicatessen salads, spices (Technical Committee 3):

Grain products, potato products, oilseed products (Technical Committee 4):

Fruit, vegetables, mushrooms (Technical Committee 5):

Beverages (Technical Committee 6):

Ice cream, honey, puddings / desserts (Technical Committee 7):

history

Emergence

The establishment of the German Food Book goes back to the reform of the Federal German food law, which was first tackled by the 2nd German Bundestag in the 1950s . The model was the Austrian Codex Alimentarius Austriacus, on the one hand with regard to its division into guiding principles and its legal nature as a guideline without legal force, on the other hand also with a view to the establishment of a permanent Codex Commission, which draws up and develops the guiding principles. In 1958, the Bundestag initially commissioned the Federal Ministry of the Interior by law to appoint a commission to create a food book. In doing so, he laid down the basic structure that still exists today, according to which the commission is composed of representatives from science, food control, consumers and business and is appointed by the ministry and provided with rules of procedure.

Even before the commission could come into being, after the 1961 federal election, responsibility was transferred to the newly formed Federal Ministry of Health under the leadership of Minister Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt , who appointed the members that same year. The commission met on February 27, 1962 for its constituent meeting and formed eight technical committees, which then began their work. The commission was able to adopt the first guiding principles at the 3rd plenary session in January 1965; they were published in the Federal Gazette in June 1965. The first published headline chapters concerned:

  • Purity requirements for coloring substances
  • Purity requirements for preserving substances
  • Long-life baked goods
  • Oil seeds and masses and confectionery made therefrom
  • Frozen foods
  • Mushrooms and mushroom products

Of these, the guiding principles for oil seeds and the masses and confectionery made from them still exist today, with changes made in the meantime; the rest have been repealed, revised or incorporated into other guiding principle chapters. In the course of the following decades, numerous other guiding principles were adopted, updated and repealed.

In January 2001, the Federal Government under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder transferred responsibility for food and consumer goods and thus also for the German Food Book from the Ministry of Health to the newly cut Federal Ministry for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture under Minister Renate Künast .

Recent developments

The consumer organization Foodwatch criticized the lack of transparency in the work of the German Food Book Commission. In 2007 she sued the Federal Republic of Germany to have the minutes of the meeting published. This lawsuit was dismissed by the Cologne Administrative Court at the beginning of 2010 , since "without the necessary confidentiality, the formation of open opinions and neutral decision-making would be impaired". The appeal against this decision before the Higher Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia was rejected on November 2, 2010, an appeal was not allowed. A complaint to the Federal Administrative Court against the non-admission of the appeal failed in July 2011.

In 2009, based on a report by the television magazine Frontal21 on imitation cheese , a public debate about the deceptive presentation and labeling of food developed. In response to this, the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, under Minister Ilse Aigner , launched the “Clarity and Truth in the Labeling and Presentation of Food” in September 2009. This initiative should also be supported by the German Food Book Commission by formulating the guiding principles in a more understandable manner and, if necessary, supplementing them. To this end, the German Food Book should be expanded to include a horizontal guiding principle with “general principles on the designation, information and presentation” of foods. At the 42nd Executive Committee meeting of the Commission on October 29, 2009 the Executive Committee commissioned a working group with the draft of this guiding principle, which was available for voting at the 26th plenary meeting on February 9, 2011. However, it missed the necessary unanimous approval and at the 27th plenary session on July 30 of the same year also the three-quarters majority required in the second reading, although the ministry clearly stated its wish to adopt the guiding principle. The opponents of the horizontal principle saw it as a departure from the principle that the food book should only describe the general understanding of certain products, and an impermissible normative tendency.

As a result, the Ministry withdrew its support from the German Food Book Commission, at least according to the Chair Rehländer and other members; the 50th anniversary celebration of the commission, due in 2012, did not take place. Minister Aigner announced a review of the entire structure of the German Food Book and the Commission; Following a public tender by the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food on April 1, 2014, the Bonn-based consulting firm AFC Public Services , which specializes in the agriculture and food industry, was awarded the contract for an "open-ended evaluation" of the German Food Book and the commission in the form of a scientific study received.

In the course of the evaluation, various options were examined and, as a result, a retention of the DLMBK was recommended, but also an increase in the efficiency, acceptance and transparency of its work by streamlining and strengthening the structures. As a result, the rules of procedure of the DLMBK were changed, the office was better staffed and the commission was reappointed for 5 years on July 1, 2016, with around 2/3 of the members being newly appointed.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Das Deutsche Lebensmittelbuch ( Memento of the original from April 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bmelv.de
  2. ↑ Instructions for the application of the guidelines of the German Food Book Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, accessed on December 9, 2019
  3. ↑ § 16 LFGB
  4. ↑ a b c Rules of Procedure of the German Food Book Commission of May 25, 2009. (PDF, 34.3 kB) Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, accessed on December 29, 2013 .
  5. ^ Members of the German Food Book Commission. Appointment period 2009 to 2014. (No longer available online.) Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, archived from the original on December 21, 2013 ; Retrieved December 29, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bmelv.de
  6. ↑ Federal Law Gazette 2013 Part I No. 27, issued in Bonn on June 10, 2013.
  7. ↑ Julia Klöckner: Consumers are better informed about food through the German Food Book. Press release No. 025 from 02/03/10. (No longer available online.) Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, archived from the original on December 31, 2013 ; Retrieved December 29, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bmelv.de
  8. ↑ BMEL: The guiding principles of the German Food Book ( Memento of the original from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bmelv.de
  9. ↑ Grocery book planned. In: Pharmaceutical newspaper. 102nd volume, No. 41, 1957, p. 1076 ( Braunschweig University Library ).
  10. ↑ Art. 7 of the law amending and supplementing the Food Act of December 21, 1958 ( Federal Law Gazette I p. 950 )
  11. ↑ Food law. In: Pharmaceutical newspaper. 108th year, No. 2, 1963, p. 42 ( Braunschweig University Library ).
  12. ↑ 3rd plenary meeting of the German Food Book Commission. In: Pharmaceutical newspaper. 110th year, No. 6, 1965, p. 184 ( Braunschweig University Library ).
  13. ↑ First principles of the food book published. In: Pharmaceutical newspaper. 110th year, No. 23, 1965, p. 737 ( Braunschweig University Library ).
  14. ^ Organizational order of the Federal Chancellor of January 22, 2001
  15. ↑ VG Köln, judgment of 25 February 2010, Az. 13 K 119/08 - judgment text online
  16. ↑ OVG NRW, judgment of November 2, 2010, Az. 8 A 475/10 - judgment text online
  17. ↑ BVerwG, decision of July 18, 2011, Az. 7 B 14.11 - decision text online
  18. ↑ a b c Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (Ed.): Initiative “Clarity and Truth in the Labeling and Presentation of Food”. Need for action, goals and measures. (Status January 2014), online (PDF, 105 kB)
  19. ↑ Status report: 26th plenary meeting of the German Food Book Commission. (No longer available online.) Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Consumer Protection, archived from the original on April 7, 2014 ; accessed on March 30, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bmel.de
  20. ^ Status report: 27th plenary meeting of the German Food Book Commission. (No longer available online.) Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Consumer Protection, archived from the original on April 7, 2014 ; accessed on March 30, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bmel.de
  21. ↑ a b Christoph Murmann: Grocery book in the crisis. In: Lebensmittel Zeitung. No. 50, December 14, 2012, p. 22.
  22. ↑ Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food, public call for tenders "Evaluation of the German Food Book and the German Food Book Commission" of November 27, 2013
  23. ↑ Information on the Ministry's website ( Memento of the original from July 4, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bmel.de