Food law experts exchanged ideas

After the 2020 Autumn Symposium had to be postponed to spring 2021 due to the coronavirus, the Research Centre for Food Law (FLMR) was once again able to hold what is now the second largest conference on food law as usual on 14/15 October 2021 with over 150 participants - albeit as a purely online event.

Moderated by Prof. Dr. Kai Purnhagen, Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Bosch, Prof. Dr. Alfred H. Meyer, Prof. Dr. Markus Möstl, and Prof. Dr. Jörg Gundel, the 20th Bayreuth FLMR Autumn Symposium under the motto of "Food Law in the Multilevel System: Innovations, Lines of Development, Tensions" was a complete success.

The event kicked off with a presentation by Dr. Lorenz Franken from the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, who gave participants a comprehensive insight into its Farm to Fork strategy. Afterwards, the deputy director of the FLMR, Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Bosch (University of Bayreuth), gave a lecture on criminal and administrative offence law. The question of whether nationwide uniform criteria for assessing fines in food law offences are a requirement of the rule of law was debated in lively fashion in a subsequent discussion by several participants from administration, business, consumers, and science.

Dr. Sabine Kurlbaum from the Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety addressed the question of further developments and challenges in the monitoring of online trade.

Voluntary animal welfare labelling demanded

Dr Hinrich Snell from the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture addressed the transformation of livestock farming in his presentation. He focused on the need for sustainable and fair livestock farming for the future. The speaker pleaded for the introduction of voluntary state animal welfare labelling in order to make consumers aware of the relevance of this issue. In addition, he considered a restructuring of livestock farming to be necessary, which, however, could only be implemented through massive subsidies for investment.

Mark Zeller from fTRACE GmbH then presented the digitalisation of the supply chain as an opportunity for efficiency and legal certainty, explaining that consumer expectations these days demand the traceability and transparency of food products.

Dr. Evelyn Kirchsteiger-Meier from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences explained the innovations of the Codex Alimentarius and spoke in particular about HACCP and the food safety culture. Among other things, food business operators should actively engage in and promote food safety culture in order to circumvent any breaches of food law due diligence obligations.

Supply chain due diligence law is coming

Dr. Stephan Schäfer from ZENK Rechtsanwälte shed light on the extent to which the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act will have a practical impact on the food industry, as it will come into force on 1 January 2023. The aim of the law is to improve both international human rights and environmental protection by, among other things, implementing risk management and regular risk analyses in companies. However, the speaker was critical of the prospect of the practical handling of the law being made more difficult due to the large number of undefined legal terms.

Prof. Dr. Alfred H. Meyer (meyer.rechtsanwälte, Munich) gave a successful conclusion to the first day of the event with his lecture on "outrage marketing" by individual manufacturers, such as a lemonade manufacturer who advertised its product as "officially hyposugarised" because the food monitoring authority had - lawfully - objected to the low sugar content of the lemonade.

The second day of the event was opened by Dr. Georg Schreiber from the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety with the topic of "Digital administrative assistance - the BVL as national contact point in the EU 'Alert and Cooperation Network'".

Prof. Dr. Werner Schroeder, LL.M. from the University of Innsbruck then spoke about origin labelling and the limits of renationalisation in the multi-level system. He took a critical look at origin labelling.

In this context, the presentation by Gaëlle Saint-Jalmes (Qolumn Avocats, Paris) on "The Lactalis-case: national measures and origin labelling" offered a valuable addition from the French perspective on questions of national origin labelling.

Continuing on the theme of misleading information, Dr. Christian Böhler (Squire Patton Boggs, Frankfurt) gave a lecture on origin labelling, in particular on the different understandings of the consumer concept, as well as the developments and areas of application in the different member states.

The symposium was concluded by the presentation on the area of tension of member state regulations with regard to origin labelling, in particular on the "from farm to table" strategy, and the significance of the new sustainability goals for Union law by Peter Loosen LL.M. (Lebensmittelverband Deutschland e. V.).