Reorganization of food and feed law consumer-unfriendly

The President of the German Farmers' Association (DBV), Gerd Sonnleitner, criticized the planned law for the reorganization of food and animal feed law as unclear and not user-friendly. By combining the areas of food and animal feed into one law, provisions that had only applied to one product group in the previous law would be extended indiscriminately to all products in the area of ​​application. This inevitably pre-programmed over-regulation. The simplification of the application of the law hoped for by the responsible Federal Ministry for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture will not be achieved. In order to simplify the application of the law, the DBV therefore proposes reviewing the statutory powers of the draft law for their requirements. 

From the perspective of the DBV, only maintaining two independent areas, namely animal feed and foodstuffs and necessities, would guarantee easier application of the law for consumers, economic operators and administration. The necessary adaptation of the two regulatory areas to EU law could be carried out within the framework of a common article law for the reorganization of food and feed law with two separate areas. Sonnleitner emphasized that feed law should be understood as part of the food safety chain, despite the separate consideration of food and feed. Tried and tested structures in the legal system would make it possible to maintain the high level of consumer protection, since those applying the law and those subject to the law would be faced with familiar legislation. In addition, necessary future changes to legislation and law enforcement for the federal and state governments would be made significantly easier.

Source: Bonn [dbv]