Based On The Comparison Of China And The United States Food Safety Control Research

Food safety regulation is one of the most important fields within governmentregulation in modern times, which is also a worldwide challenge. Governmentregulation originated in anti-monopoly regulation and economic regulation in U.S.A.in the late19thcentury. With the further development of the modern industry, adverseimpact resulted form enterprise production and business operation has brought moreand more serious problems. Government regulation extends to the field of socialregulation such as environmental pollution, food safety, and occupational safety.Under the wave of new liberalism, economic regulation has become deregulation,while social regulation has become under tighten control. In recent years, food scaresare common in China, which is related to government regulation performance morethan social contradictions and problems. Solving food safety in China doesn’t lie inthe establishing or enhancing of regulation, but in the effectiveness of regulationsystem itself.This article aims to make empirical study in existing government regulation offood safety by means of comparative analysis between China and U.S.A. The UnitedStates is among the first countries to establish government regulation, also the first tobuild food safety regulation, which is the more effectively in the world. Theregulation difference between China and the United States is objectively analyzed onbase of comparative perspective, which is not meant to emphasize China-America gapor completely following after America for China. The research in the method ofcomparative perspective is about jumping out of consider Chinese problem as itstands, but with the purpose of discovering object of study which is difficult to detectin previous research.Research direction is selected on account of difference in regulation choicebetween the two countries. Why do these tow countries make such a different choicein the same regulation field? There has to be a reason behind every choice. There alsohas to be a result caused by every choice. The following research directions are selected in terms of balance of the regulatory power, conflict of interests in theprocess of regulation, selection preference on object of regulation, stimulating andrestricting mechanism leading to selection preference, cooperative regulation,market-oriented information-discriminating service, as a result of the large differencebetween these tow countries in the above aspects.The balance of the regulatory power is the institutional infrastructure forregulator to play a functional role. This concept means the balance between theparticularity and conditionality of regulation power. The particularity of U.S.A.regulation power behaves as it integrates quasi-legislative power, executive power,and quasi-judicial power. The independence of U.S.A. regulation power behaves as itis relatively independent of president of U.S.A. and the attached cabinet department.To the contrary, the regulation power of China is short of particularity, independence,and the rule of law constrains, which make an arbitrariness and unpredictability ofregulation power.Conflict of interests (COIs) is the immediate cause of regulation capture. Therecould be large wealth effect in both the pre-market approval session and thepost-market surveillance session in U.S.A. The potential COIs during U.S.A.regulation exist objectively and widespread. It’s just because that COIs have beenbrought into the open, so that U.S.A. has established a relatively perfect restrictionmechanism. To the contrary, COIs in Chinese regulation are in the hot seat, as a resultof deficiency of the open study in terms of the existence checking, the form ofexpression, the formation mechanism and the influence of COIs.There is a widely divergent between China and U.S.A. in terms of regulatingtarget and regulating pattern in food safety regulation. China possesses a pre-marketregulation with complex procedure and high-cost expenses; meanwhile U.S.A. has apre-market with simple procedure and low-cost expenses. At the aspect of post-marketregulation, China takes an easy and predictable regulating behavior, at the same timeU.S.A. put an unpredictable and complicated regulation pattern to use.There is going to be an incentive and restraint mechanism hidden behind theabove choice preference of the tow countries regulation system. On one side, thesource of the payment for regulation cost makes up an incentive. Regulator can hardlyselect the every enterprise as the approval target within pre-market regulation,because of the “non-user fee base” regulation. On the other side, the scientific and technological strength comprises a restrictive factor. Regulator might prefer newproduct or new ingredient in food as the approval target within pre-market regulationdue to a high-level information-discriminating capability.The cooperation of regulation can save the fiscal expenditure for government,and introduce social capital on account of decentralized regulation which can givesocial capital a wider market space. Cooperation model of “government-university”and “government-university-major industry” have already established in U.S.A. forfood safety regulation. But government has a monopoly on food safety regulation inChina. There are no other non-government organizations participating in regulation inChina, for the reason of absence of driving force and environment for Chineseregulators.The implementation of food safety regulation is aimed to reduce theinformation asymmetry in food quality. However, the information-discriminatingservice might not be supplied by government itself, but numerous market players. Themonopoly supplying of information-discriminating service by government, may affectthe fairness of screening results, make customers difficult to get in touch with suchservices, and lead to department benefits obtained by regulators. On the opposite,market-oriented supplying of information-discriminating service may promote astronger industrial competitiveness, the formation of equilibrium price of services,and technical progress. Therefore, the information-discriminating services had betterto be supplied by market-oriented and independent third-party organizations.The purpose of this research doesn’t lie in the difference between China and theUnited States in the field of food safety regulation by empirical analyzing, which isonly the research method. The difference itself doesn’t indicate the superiority of oneregulation system over another. By means of further study on economic effect ofregulation difference，the new concept for effectively food safety regulation isdiscussed. As a conclusion, Chinese government should take a fresh look oneffectively food safety regulation in terms of free-charge regulation, supply oftechnical public service in process of regulation, de-bureaucratic in the field oftechnical regulation, market-oriented supply of information-discriminating, regulatingthe regulators.