Food : Germany

Maintenance of a food supply which meets consumers’ needs at reasonable prices is the foremost aim of national food policies and is also mandated by the Treaty on European Union. This has been ensured in Germany for years, as can be seen from the fact that consumers have been spending an increasingly smaller proportion of their income on food. In 1995 it was just under 16 percent (excluding spirits and tobacco, etc.) compared with 23 percent (in the western states) in 1970. Moreover, Germany’s markets offer consumers an extraordinarily wide range of foodstuffs to choose from.

This variety had steadily increased as a result of the gradual harmonization of food legislation in the European Community even before the single market was launched on 1 January 1993. New laws that are repeatedly adapted in light of the latest scientific knowledge protect the consumer from hazards to health and fraudulent products and help to improve the quality of foods. Consumers must be in a position to correctly judge the quality and price of the foods offered for sale and must possess sufficient knowledge of foods and nutrition to choose a balanced diet and avoid food-related illness.