Study Of Food Safety Laws And Regulation

Since the last decade, quite a few serious food safety incidents erupted in almost the world. Nowadays, the governments and consumers of many countries have to pay much more attentions to food safety than before. Unlike the acute contagious diseases at all, the problems of food safety cannot be resovled effectively along with the development of national economy, the rise of the standard of people's living, the improvement of sanitary condition, and the perfection of immunization. Contrarily, food safety issues will occur frequently along with the mechanization and centralization of food production and a broad use of chemicals and new technologies. Therefore, there is an inevitable risk of food safety issues in both developed and developing countries, regardless of how perfect the supervising system on food safety the countries have built. As a result, the problem of food safety has become a global topic, concerned by most countries and people around the world.The food safety issues now has gone so far beyond the traditional range of food sanitation or food contamination, which concern the management and protection of the whole food chain of human beings. Not only scientific research, support of the government and the constitution of laws and regulations, but also the participation of consumers and the enterprises strategic response to the market rule are needed to follow the development rule of nature and human being, to build up a sustainable scientific theory foundation for the food production, management and consumption, and to organize and manage a safe and healthy human being's food chain. The settlement of food safety problem lies on the efforts of the government, enterprises and consumers. With the improvement of knowledge of consumers and enterprises, efficient legal regulations, active participation of consumers and media, excluding the negative influence of nature, society and technology, keeping an eye on the future global trade of food, andadministrating the whole food chain, we will provide the society with more safer food.In this paper, from the economic law perspective, the function and mechanism of food safety regulation are discussed and how to improve it is also discussed. Except the preface, the paper is composed of nine chapters in 210,000 words.Chapter 1: Introduction: review on food safety from the economic law perspectiveThe nature of the food safety law are researched from the view of economic law in this chapter. With reviewing the food safety issues form the points of time and space, the author concludes food safety is a global topic whether in the past, now, or in the future. By discriminating some related concepts of food safety, the connotation and extension of food safety are defined. The food safety regulation is formed to accommodate the need of safety food in modern society and to promote the economic development. That food safety regulation has characters of economic law has been unveiled. The reasons are following: First, unsafe food undermines the public interests which match the properties of adjustment object of economic law. Second, food safety guarantee needs government regulation by using economic law. Third, food safety issues regulated by the economic law can avoid the adjustment deficiency of other juristic departments.Chapter 2: Problems, effects and reasons of food safetyIn this chapter, by analyzing the food safety issues, their effects and the reasons causing these issues, the situations of the world food safety and the actuality of China food safety are evaluated. The major problems of China food safety are: the sustained increase of foodborne disease, hidden dangers of major food, abuses of agriculture pesticide, the deviation from food safety control requirements in food production process and transportation process, criminal and terror attacks about food safety, and so on. Because of theseproblems, the development of economy and society is severely damaged, and the competition ability of our food industry is also harmed. The main reasons to cause our food safety problems include: microbiological pollution, chemical pollution, environment pollution, bad management abilities and too small scale of food enterprises, unconsummated protection system, unconsummated management system, unconsummated laws and regulations, deficiency of knowledge and technology in this aspect, and the risks brought from development of new products.Chapter 3 : The theory foundation of food safety regulationIn this chapter, food safety regulation is analyzed from aspects of economics, politics, psychics, jurisprudence, sustainable development rationales. The theory pivot of food safety regulation is demonstrated. The fundamental world outlook and methodology are provided to construct China food safety regulation. Basic viewpoints are listed as follow: The main reasons for government intervention of food safety problems are the insufficient supply and information asymmetry in food safety and the public properties of food safety. Food safety is closly connected with the construction of government management ability, the construction of harmonious society, economic safety, "agriculture, rural areas and farmers", and the protection of consumer rights. Requirement for food safety is a kind of spirit pursuit coming from people in a good economic condition. Food safety regulation is also influenced by ethic, religion, and consumer preference. Food safety is strongly depended on the sustainable development of human, food production circumstance, and related industries. The values oriented by food safety regulation are order value, eficiency value and equity value.Chapter 4: The research about the evolution mechanism of food safety regulationThis chapter studies the evolution mechanism of food safety regulationin the government regulation background. Firstly, the author introduce the connotation and form, rationales and the basic economics rationale of government regulation. Then, the author analyzes the economic basis of the evolution mechanism of food safety regulation, including "supply and demand", "social optimum", "cost and benefit" rationales. The theoretical limitation of these three economics hypothesis is also discussed. On the base of foregoing discussion, definition and form of the food safety regulation are circumscribed and generalized; the approach and its realizing form of food safety regulation are analyzed. Food safety regulation is the legal means by government to provide compulsory or guiding request for food suppliers to ensure food safety. It can be divided into public regulation and private regulation according to the standard of execution subject; compulsory regulation, instructive regulation and volunteering regulation according to the standard of compelling force; regulation focusing ex ante prevention and regulation focusing ex post investigation according to the standard of process of regulation; regulation of civil responsibility, regulation of administrative responsibility and regulation of criminal responsibility according to the standard of responsibility form. Whether the impletment of food safety regulation is successful or not depends on the interaction between the public regulation (food safety regulation, product liability, criminal law and food standard are involved) and private regulation (self regulation and certification are involved).Chapter 5: Research on food safety law systemBy checking the historical development of the food safety legal system in China and foreign countries, this chapter attempts to find out the right form and content of food safety legal system. By evaluating and analyzing the food safety legal system of the main developed countries of the world, the author summarize the development trends and the basic principle of the food safety legal system of various countries. After summing up and analyzing our country's condition, the author points out the main problems of our country.Chapter 6: Food safety administration systemThis chapter starts with foreign food safety administration system, conclude its content and basis principle and assess the contemporary situations of food safety administrative system in our country, points out the defect and the way to improve it, and suggest to restructure the food safety administrative agents. The main opinions are: the food safety administration should follow the principle of scientific justification, risk analysis, efficiency, public anticipation, and legal administration. The trends of the reform of Chinese present food safety administrative system is that the administrative duties should be divided reasonablly, and the role of the local government's food safety authority should be strengthened, the interaction mechanism among government, enterprise and social agency units should be valued, the executive power of the government departments should be enforced, the jurisdiction supervision should be enforced. It's necessary and urgent to set up a independent, united and powerful food safety administrative agency in china.Chapter 7: Regulation of product liability law on food safetyThis chapter sets off from the incentives rationale provided to enterprise to ensure food safety, discusses the important effect of Product Liability Law on food safety regulation. Firstly, the author expounds the construct of incentive system, focus on the incentives effect of product liability law on the enterprises, and point out that every food firm should have the incentives to avoid suits caused by food safety torts, but only reach the point that the marginal cost of implementing this precautions equal the marginal benefits. Then, the author introduce the concrete application of the US product liability law in food safety regulation, and compares it with the UK product liability. Finally, the author puts forward suggestion of product safety regulation of Product Liability Law: enlarge the concept and its scope, set up the liability principle of food safety damage, perfect the system of punitive damages andmental damages.Chapter 8: Food safety regulation in international tradeThis chapter expounds the mechanism and approachs to resolute the disputes caused by the confliction between different food safety regulation from the perspective of international trade. The facts that the developed countries enforce food safety regulation lead to the friction of international food trade. The SPS Agreement and TBT under the foundation of WTO provide a dispute resolution mechanism. However, by looking into the "counter-notification" submitted to WTO dispute resolution mechanism, we can find that the mechanism is not successful . The developed countries use the agreements to set up non-tariff barrier in disguised form, which has seriously affected the export of developing countries, including China. To resolve the trade dispute caused by food safety regulation is one of the most challenging issues nowadays. The author come to this conclusion that: there's no process of choosing public benefit in the world, but only the restrict among special beneficiary group; facing the more strict food safety regulation which is on the way, few developing countries can say "no"; the developed countries insist on strict food safety standard which will cause mass demand of high value product; developing countries have no choice but improve the capability of civil food enterprise, efficient administration of food safety and the health risk from the agriculture to realize the object of market-entry to developed countries.Chapter 9: The reflection on the consummation of domestic food safety legal systemDepond on our country's condition, this chapter puts forward the approaches, principles, and general ideas of construction, precedence and emphasis of the improvement of food safety legislation. The approaches for food safety regulation we should choose is reforming the agencies, strengthening the supervision, intensifying the legislation, supplying the laws,preventing the risk mainly, controlling the progress totally, responding to the emergency accidents quickly, eforcing the public antification. The principle is: "from the farm to the fork", risk analysis, transparency, legal efficiency accessment, food supplier undertaking the main responsibility, the interaction of public regulation and private regulation, and the flexibility doctrine. The general idea of construction of food safety legislation in our country is: systemization and colligation of the legal system, the organization of internationalization and localization, the equilibrium of horizontal and vertical law. The precedence of the improvement of food safety legislation is: "The Basic Law of Food Safety", "The Agricultural Products Quality and Safety Law" and "Product Quality Responsibility law". The emphasis of the improvement of food safety legislation is: food safety standard, system of examination and certification, market accessing system of food safety, safety regulation of novel food, information system of food safety, food safety credit systems, food safety emergency responsive mechanism, label regulation of food nutrition and content, and preventiven machanism to biological terror attack.