Research On China's Food Safety Regulation System

As the saying goes"Food is the first necessity of the people", food safety is related to each person's physical health and safety, as well as a country's economic development, political stability and social harmony. However, in recent years, China's food safety accidents occur frequently, such as Sudan Red sauce, red duck eggs, milk powder in Fuyang, Clenobuterol hydrochloride, Southern Flounder and other incidents. The well-known brands in our country, free products, "Sanlu" infant milk powder detonated a food crisis in China dairy industry which has just passed. In the 3.15 evening party this year, the exposure of "Shuanghui" Clenobuterol event deeply hurt people's hearts again. These phenomena have shown that the increasingly prominent issue of food safety has influenced the life and health of our people, social harmony and stability, the market economic order and the foreign food trade. On the one hand, the series of food safety incidents manifest that manufacturers have not done that should be their responsibility. They cut corners in the production process, replace the superior quality by inferior quality, or add the illegal food additives and so on. On the other hand, it also exposes the loophole in the food safety regulation. The food industry has public goods attributes, externalities and information asymmetry property. When the failure occurs in the food market, there is need for the visible hand of state for intervention and management. Besides, the monitoring system plays a crucial role in the regulation of food safety. It establishes a food safety regulatory organization, configuration management authority, responsibilities division, and its operating mechanism by a series of systems.Since reform and opening, China's food safety regulation system has been implemented by multi-sector, sub-regulatory approach. By 2009, the"Food Safety Law of the People's Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as "Food Safety Law") still made use of this system. But it re-defined the responsibilities of the each regulatory authority, established the Food Safety Commission, and strengthened the communication and collaboration among various regulatory departments. In this way, it has made adjustments and perfection for the food safety regulation system of China in a sense. However, we should see the existing regulatory system still has many flaws and imperfections. Such as, there are still uncertainties on the division of responsibility among the regulatory authorities; departments and regions still lack smooth communication and coordination; the relationship between central and local governments need to be further rationalized; the inequality between regulatory body's rights and responsibilities; and the intermediary organizations, the media, consumers and other third parties supervisory role have not been fully exerted. In response to these problems above, the author puts forward several pieces of reasonable advice which introduces some foreign advanced concepts and measures, combining with Chinese national conditions.There are four parts of the paper:The first part is the theoretical basis of food safety regulation. It mainly analyzes why we should control the food safety from an economic perspective, and try to explore from the perspective of law and analysis, which aims to enhance the role of the theory of law in food safety regulation.The second part is an introduction of the overview of foreign food safety regulation system. The food safety regulatory system abroad has been studied for quite some time, and has accumulated many successful experiences. By studying the status of United States, Japan, Germany and other developed countries, we can borrow some reference value for our food safety regulation system.The third part is about the status and the main problems in China's food safety regulation system. China's current food safety regulation system is the main sub-regulation, supervision, supplemented by species. Health administrative department shoulders the comprehensive coordination responsibilities of food safety; State quality supervision department, industry and commerce administration department and the state food and drug administration department supervise and manage the food production, food distribution, food service activities. Agricultural department is responsible for the supervision to the primary agricultural products. The problems of this regulation system are: the division of responsibility is not clear; the lack of communication between departments and regional cooperation; relations between central and local governments need to be further rationalized; the supervisory role of food industry associations and the public is not fully played; the regulatory body's authority and responsibility is unequal and so on.The forth part is about several measures for improvement, which are introduced by successful experiences abroad and for major problems of the food safety regulation system. For example, we need to improve the allocation of responsibility of the regulatory body; strengthen the capacity of the coordination between departments; divide reasonably the purview of the central and local; improve the system of responsibility and accountability consistent with sound social participation; construct the food safety regulation network.