Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (Germany)

The Federal Ministry for Food and Agriculture (), abbreviated BMEL, is a cabinet-level ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany. Its primary headquarters are located in Bonn with a secondary office in Berlin. From 1949 to 2001 it was known as the Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Forests (). Through an organizational order by the German Chancellor on 22 January 2001, it became the Federal Ministry for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture after the Consumer protection function was transferred from the Federal Ministry for Health ("Bundesministerium für Gesundheit"). The name Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection was adopted on 22 November 2005 simply to alphabetize its functional parts in the German language. Due to the political restructurings of the 18th German Bundestag in December 2013 the division "Consumer Protection" was transferred to the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection.
Organization.
The current Minister for Food and Agriculture is Julia Klöckner. The Parliamentary State Secretaries are Hans-Joachim Fuchtel and Uwe Feiler. Beate Kasch is the Permanent State Secretary. In addition to the Ministry Management (including management staff), it consists of eight departments (as of September 2020):
Agencies.
Under the auspices of the BMEL are various Federal agencies, legally independent institutions under public law and government research institutes: