Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
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Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (listen (RkReÜAÜG) (literally, Cattle marking and beef labelling supervision duties delegation law) is a law of the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern of 2000, dealing with the supervision of the labeling of beef.
The name is an example of the virtually unlimited compounding of nouns that is possible in the Germanic languages. German orthography uses “closed” compounds, concatenating nouns to form one long word. This is unlike most English compounds, which are separated using spaces or hyphens.
This is the official "short" title of the law, its full name is Gesetz zur Übertragung der Aufgaben für die Überwachung der Rinderkennzeichnung und Rindfleischetikettierung, corresponding to Law on delegation of duties for supervision of cattle marking and beef labelling. Most German laws have a short title consisting of a composite noun.
Words as long as this are nowhere near common in German. When the law was proposed in the local parliament, the members reacted with laughter and the responsible minister Till Backhaus apologised for the “possibly excessive length.” In 1999, the German Language Society nominated Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz for its Word of the Year award, but it lost to Millennium.
