On International Legal Regulation Of Food Safety Issues

In the movement of globalization, the production distribution and purchases of food becoming more and more internationalized, people may well enjoy delicious food and fruits but also be threatened by the danger of insecure food from every area of the earth. Food safety issue has become one of the common conundrums facing all the countries in world. The settlement of food safety problems depends not only on the support of science and technology and public monitoring but also on safeguard of nations'legal system. International food safety needs to be safeguarded through international legal regulation, which guarantees all the human beings'health and lives. In short, studying the international regulation of food safety issues makes much sense for people's health and lives.The food safety has new traits in the globalized economic age. First, food safety has intertwined with international trade. The frequently occurring of international food safety accidents has urged governments all over the world to raise food safety standard to ensure people's health and lives, which are the ingredients for the basement of conducting technical barriers, which may frustrate importing of foreign food and protect home food enterprises'benefits. For instance, America,Japan and Europe are China's main target foreign food market. These countries and areas have set many very high food safety standards to protect their own food enterprises, saying that the high standard is for people's safety. Second, there is more and more international regulation on international food safety. To ensure international food safety, countries should enhance communication and cooperation in the area of food safety monitoring,food safety testing and food safety technology through signing bilateral food safety agreements. So it is very important to study international food safety regulation for settling the current domestic and international food safety problems.The basic form of international regulation on food safety issues is food trade mates'bilateral agreement. Taking China as an instance, in the background of internationalization of food safety issues, General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People's Republic of China has established good cooperation and communication system in the area of food safety in recent years. The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine has established cooperation system and concluded bilateral agreements with many food trade mates including America,Canada,Brazil,Argentina,Chile,Japan,Korea,Mongolia,Malaysia,Thailand,Vietnam and European Union.The World Trade Organization, the most influential global trade organization, plays a significant role in settling international food safety issues, which has two agreements, Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade and Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, regulating food safety issues. Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade involves members'legislation and conduction of food safety technical regulations,standards,procedures for assessment of conformity. It supports members'restricting international food trade for domestic food safety through conducting technical regulations,standards and procedures for assessment of conformity on condition that these measures don't exceed the bottom line that has a excessive restriction on international food trade. The latter pertains to regulations about rules of importing animals,plants,products of animals and plants and food, whose applying scope includes three areas, food safety,animals' sanitariness and plants'sanitariness. It supports members'taking necessary measures to protect food safety,animals and plants'lives and health, and standardizes international rules about Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, minimizing negative impact on the international food trade.