On The Improvement Of Food Safety Regulatory System

"The country takes the people as its root; the food is what matters the people; the safety of the food is the beginning of everything."We all know food is the most basic material for the humanity survival and development. The problem of food safety is not only concerns the vital interest of the mass, but also concerns domestic economy and social development. In recent years, along with the economics globalization and the international food trade's expansion day by day, some countries and areas have had the food safety malignant event frequently and internationally. It makes satety of food hot spot all over the world. Some developed countries used legal means to ensure food safety, which has formed the perfect food safety regulation theory gradually.With rapid economic development and people's increasing living standards, the supply of food both in quantity and quality, has gain an unprecedented development in China. However, malignant food safety incidents occur frequently, such as "Clenbuterol", "poisonous rice", "Datouwawa", "Sanlu milk powder" (the most vicious and serious one, in 2008) shocked people and attracted more concerns. And still many other incidents, cause consumers panic and disturbed. All these events reveal Chinese food safety regulation has many problems. At present, food safety has become the hot issue to all of the society and has an impact on China's social harmony and stability. It is still an important factor in deal with the foreign trade of food, thereby affecting the process of building a moderately prosperous society. Therefore, improve the food safety regulation has become inescapable.In the past 30 years of reform and opening policy, Chinese food safety regulation has made considerable progress. Central and local governments have issued a series of laws, regulations and regulatory documents to improve Chinese food safety regulation. In particular, "The People's Republic of China Food Safety Law" passed in February 2009, has an active meaning on the maturity of Chinese current food safety regulatory. But still the new law can't change the modeling of separating process of management, so we just can't have a complete improvement as well.In this paper, I begin with the theory of food safety control, by introducing the developed countries'food safety regulatory system and the history of Chinese food safety regulatory system, writer discusses the improving of Chinese current food safety regulatory system. However, Chinese current food safety regulatory system is still in the initial stage. There is a big gap in this aspect between the developed countries'and ours, so the study and formulation of food safety regulatory legal system which has Chinese characteristics has important theoretical and practical significance in protecting the health of our people, maintaining social stability and the promotion of international trade development. Paper is divided into four parts:The first part, the necessity of food safety regulation. Food safety has the common attribute of all public goods', so its most markable features are non-competitive and non-exclusive. Food safety also has negative externalities and information asymmetries, so the market mechanism can not play a regulatory role. Government, as representatives of the public interest, has the responsibility to safeguard the lives of the public health and safety. Into the 21st century, corporate social responsibility has become a generally accepted concept in the international community. However, urged by the nature of earning more fame and fortune more and more enterprises choose to escape the responsibility of their own. So government as the community manager should standardize enterprise behavior, enforce them to undertake their social responsibility. Large-scale production of modern society makes detailed specialization, so a commodity often needs to go through many people's hands and numerous working procedure it can be produced. In this case, always it is impossible to a consumer to identify if any process meets the quality requirements. Once the commodity has the quality problem, the consumer is difficult to protect his right and call to account the corporate's relevant responsibility. Comparing with the business, consumers are often in an inferior position. They can only turn to the government for help,expecting the government could take effective measures to safeguard social fairness and justice. Therefore, the Government should have an obligation to be charged with the responsibility for food safety regulation.The second part is about the investigation of the developed countries food safety regulatory system and the reference study. This paper describes the food safety regulatory system of the United States, European Union, Canada and Japan and other developed countries and we can see that although all these different developed countries have various methods in managing their food safety aspect, they all have the same following characteristics: a relatively complete control of food safety regulations and detailed quality standards; the complete system of monitoring the whole process of from "farm to table"; the advanced food safety regulatory means; the establishment of the information systems of food quality and safety services .The third part,the history and defects of Chinese food safety regulatory system . From 1950 to 1990, Chinese food safety regulatory system has experienced three developments, and relevant laws and regulations have been improved. However, Chinese food safety regulatory system has still defects in laws, regulations, quality standards and long sub-regulation and so on.The fourth part, the improvement of Chinese food safety regulatory system is the focus of the whole paper. The NPC Standing Committee passed the "The People's Republic of China Food Safety Law" on February 28, 2009 and it came into force on June 1. The newly established "Food Safety Law" embodies the following new ideas: the new concept of legislation which based on the notion of People-oriented builds a harmonious society; building complete monitor system focused on the orients of all process from the "farm to table"; consumers play important roles in food safety regulation. The newly established "Food Safety Law" has seven major innovations in food safety regulatory system: 1.establish a unified, comprehensive community of food safety ; 2. set up a unified leadership and coordination of food safety regulatory agencies; 3. establish a clear and effective accountability system; 4. establish food safety risk monitoring and evaluation system; 5. abolish the system of exemption; 6. establish food recall system; 7. make sure stars will be held legally responsible for his endorsement of the product problems. It is true that "Food Safety Law" indeed improves Chinese food safety regulatory system, but there are still many imperfections and it cannot completely solve all the problem of Chinese food safety regulatory. So, the author made the following recommendations in this paper to further improve Chinese food safety regulatory system: 1. establish a unified, comprehensive food safety law system; 2. set up a unified leadership and coordination of food safety regulatory agencies; 3. establish a clear and effective accountability system; 4. strengthen food safety credit system; 5. set up food industry associations and technical service institutions to make them play an important role in food safety regulatory.In short, food safety itself has extensive and complex nature, which determines its monitor system is a long-term and comprehensive project. The project requires advanced detection methods, scientific standard system and perfect regulatory system. Although, from the early days to the present, Chinese food safety regulatory system has been improved step by step and has required great progress, but compared with developed countries, Chinese food safety still remains many tasks to be done and the regulators still have a lot of work to complete. Writer believes that under the constantly summing up experience, lessons and learning from foreign advanced technology, through joint efforts of the whole society, Chinese food safety regulatory system will be more perfect.