A Study On Punitive Damages In The Food Safety Law

Food security is intimately connected with everyone’s life health. For this reason,the Food Security Law (revised draft)2ndtrial was submitted to the StandingCommittee of the National People’s Congress for deliberation on December22,2014.Thereupon, the Food Security Law has become the focus topic again, and thusrevision to terms of the punitive damages and its compensation rule under existingFood Security Law has once again returned to people’s attention.In food consumptionfield, the consumers are in a weak position so that they can not contend against thepowerful enterprises. Therefore, the so-called “equal status and equal protection” isessentially a kind of inequality. Due to this reason, punitive damages has beengradually introduced into Food Security Law for the purpose of intimidating andstopping the offender conducting such act again by virtue of great number ofcompensation.This thesis constitutes of six parts. The introduction is an elaboration to thegrounds for topic selection, as well as analysis on practical significance andtheoretical significance of the topic. The first part gives an introduction to thefunctions and existing problems of punitive damages. It conducts an analysis onfunctions of punitive damages like punishment and prevention, as well as on typicalcases and several debate focuses in order to discover current problems existing inpunitive damages system in domestic food security. The second part elaborates theapplication subject of punitive damages in Food Security Law. There is uncleardefinition on subject scope of punitive damages in Article96of the Food SecurityLaw.“Consumer” key components are defined starting from comprehensiveprotection of the consumers’ interests. To differentiate the responsibility of jointprocessing producers is also explored in this part. The third part illuminates thesubjective elements of punitive damages in Food Security Law, and proposes toinclude subjective negligence into scope of punitive damages. The fourth partanalyzes the objective elements of punitive damages in Food Security law. There istoo much chaos in food security rules, so an example on prepackaged food is given toanalyze standard of judging illegal act. The fifth part ascertains the scope of punitivedamages in Food Security Law, as well as its computation principle, base number andreference factors of the compensation. The sixth part explores the coordination and joint between punitive damages in Food Security Law and relevant laws.