Perfection On Protection Of Food Consumers' Right To Know

As the old saying goes, people regard food as their prime want. Currently there are a lot of problems in food safety in China, seriously endangering the health of the people. The realization of the consumer's right to know helps improving the overall level of a country's food safety and protecting the basic rights of consumers. Therefore, countries in the world attached great importance to the protection of consumer right to know. This paper takes the protection of consumer right to know as the center, analyze the current protecting system in China and reveals the defects. On the basis of other nations'legislative experience, a system for strengthening the protection of food consumers'right to know is designed and concrete suggestions are put forward.This paper is divided into four chapters:The first chapter mainly explains that the real motivation of food consumers'right to know is achieving food safety. Food safety is not only the basic requirements for protection of human rights, but also the inevitable demand of human development, an important part of building a harmonious society. Food consumer's right to know not only is the basic of the right choice and the safe consuming, but playing an important role in promoting food safety. Thus, to achieve food consumers'right to know is important to food safety. Both the EU and the United States, having the highest levels of food safety, place the consumer's right to know in a prominent position in the legal system.The second chapter gives a brief analysis in the theoretical basis of protecting of food consumers right to know. Firstly, on the basic of asymmetric information theory, combining with the special nature of food safety information, this chapter analyzes the economic value of the consumer right to know. Secondly, this chapter analyzes the traditional civil law protection of consumer right to know from the purpose, content, methods and inadequate. Combined with the basic theory of economic law, the value of protection of food consumers'right to know is proposed. Finally, this chapter gives a brief introduction on China's current system of protection of, deconstruct the major legal relationship. With the main approach to resolve information asymmetry, three main obligations are placed and the general idea of the protection of food consumers'right to know.The third chapter analysis the defect of current legal system. China's current protection of the consumer right to know still have some defects. There are some problems in the three legal rights and obligations, embodied as follows: 1. The mandatory disclosure of information limited in a narrow range, the voluntary disclosure of information lacks prior review, information disclosure flaw's liability is underweight. 2. The division of responsibilities between government departments is unclear, regulatory information lacks of harmonization, the system of specific information lack of support. 3. Consumer reports has a poor access, conditions to request for punitive damages are improper, communication is disorder and the providing information and education functions of consumer associations are backward.The fourth chapter, which is the key part of this article, is on improving the legal system of food safety protection of consumer right to know. On the basic of other nations'legislative experience, a system for strengthening the protection of food consumers'right to know is designed and concrete suggestions are put forward.