“Like the former provision, the present one is not intended to be an exhaustive description of all subjects of the kind referred to, but a compilation of those examples which appear to be especially calculated to serve as an illustration of legislative requirements.”
The data referred to have not an officially authoritative significance, and they cannot be regarded as having established validity in connection with the administration of the law by the police or by legal authorities. (See: Commentary by Meyer-Finkenburg, page 116.)
Even the complete publication of the “Vereinbarungen zur einheitlichen Untersuchung von Nahrungs-und Genußmitteln sowie Gebrauchsgegenständen für das Deutsche Reich”, collected at the instance of the national health department, will not have the effect of giving certainty in the law relating to the manufacture of chocolate. That section of the “Vereinbarungen”, which deals with cacao products, was published in Book III (Berlin, Julius Springer 1912) pages 68-81, but the conditions in Germany are at present only similar to those existing in Switzerland and in Austria. The “Vereinbarungen” are nothing more, than a valuable semiofficial guide for the valuation and examination of food and comestibles, the provisions of which, not being obligationary, have no legal effect. They have long been in need of a thorough revision, as recent scientifical results testify, and indeed “The Voluntary association of German Food Chemists” have for years been engaged in such revision.
The consequence is, that the prosecution of various manipulation which certainly deserve to be objected to, such as the preparation of cacao or chocolate from undecorticated beans, would be difficult to carry out. The Association of German Chocolate Manufacturers has protested against that unsuitable state of affairs, and since a remedy is to be looked for only from the enactment of a law regulating the trade in cacao products, that association prepared a draft act, at its XVII. annual meeting at Leipsic on the 15th January 1893, and has submitted it to the government health department.
That draft is in accordance with the provisions printed on pages 231 and 232 a-e. The provisions of the association in reference to the trade in cacao products also contain the following paragraphs:
§ 2.
It is not to be considered adulteration or counterfeit, within the meaning of the law (§ 10) relating to trade in food materials, comestibles or articles of consumption (of 14th May 1879, Reichsgesetzblatt page 145):
1. When the productions referred to under a, b, c are mixed with meal or other substances for medicinal purposes, provided, they are of a character by which they are distinctly recognisable, or are kept in stock or offered for sale under a designation distinguishing them from chocolate, cacao mass, or cacao powder.
2. When covering or coating material, or sweetmeat chocolate is mixed with burnt almonds or hazel nuts to the extent of 5 %.
§ 3.