Study On Chinese Imported Food Safety Early Warning:a Customs Supervision Perspective

With the development of the economy and society,China has become a major component of the division of labor and consumption in the international market.China’s food imports keep growing,making the imported food an essential food source for the residents.During 2009 to 2018,China’s food import value accounted for about 1.01% of the total goods trade value,with an average annual growth rate of 18.3%.By 2018,China’s total food import value reached 72.47 billion USD,and the average annual growth rate of the major forestry food imports has exceeded 10%.At the same time,with the strengthening of the integration of global markets,food safety issues are more likely to spread to the world through the global food trade network.As a result,imported food safety issues,especially the forest food safety issues with rapidly increasing import volume,have imposed severe challenges to the food safety supervision departments.Therefore,how to more effectively identify the potential risks of imported food safety and prevent the imports of food with safety issues food has become a hotspot for the academic field and the whole society.This study analyzes the impacts of information asymmetry on the supervision of imported food safety and builds a food safety risk early warning system with the explicit information of food trades,then investigates the safety status and risk sources of imported forest food with the system,and provides relevant policy advices.The study employs quantitative methods of game theory,simulation,time series analysis and data mining.This study is composed of three parts.The first part introduces the theoretical and practical basis of the research,including the current situation of food safety supervision and the reasons for the failure of imported food safety supervision.The second part,as the core of the research,explains,from the perspective of information asymmetry,the principle and structure of the food safety early warning system and its application in the supervision of imported forest food safety.The third part provides policy advices to mitigate information asymmetry based on food safety early warning.The results show that the types,sources and wide time range of the supervision objects give rise to the information asymmetry problem in imported food safety supervision,which then leads to the inefficiency of the supervision departments in food safety management and the failure to guarantee the safety of imported food.This study develops a Chinese food import safety early warning system based on the related import information.The system is able not only to identify the source of the risks effectively,but also to determine the time range of food safety risks in the import country,providing a reliable tool for the settlement of the information asymmetry problem in the process of food safety supervision.The study uses the Chinese food import safety early warning system to identify the safety of 10 major imported forest foods.The risk analysis results show that HS0801 and HS0803 have the highest import safety risks among the 10 types of forest foods and the main risks come from countries with large import volumes and low product quality.Furthermore,the results of the risk occurrence time identification of the main import source countries of these two types of commodities show that the Philippines,the major importer of HS0803,presents a risk early warning in March 2016.This result is consistent with the actual customs inspection,indicating that the food safety early warning system developed in this study possesses high accuracy level.At last,the study suggests that on the basis of further improvement of the early warning system,measures to increase supervision resources and obtain food quality information through multiple channels can effectively alleviate information asymmetry and better ensure the safety of China’s food imports.The main innovations of this study are as follows: the study uses the economic theories of information asymmetry,game theory and product quality to analyze the causes and effects of information asymmetry in imported food safety supervision,builds a Chinese food import safety early warning system,which provides analysis tools for the food safety research and regulation department,and comprehensively evaluates the safety status of China’s forest food imports.