Study On Supervision Mechanism Of Food Safety In China

Currently the food safety situation in China is very grim; the serious food safety accidents happened and have affected the public health, social stability and economic development heavily. By analyzing the status quo of the food safety supervision mechanism in China, its problems and causes, and learning from the advanced foreign experiences, the essay puts forwards suggestions on improving food safety supervision mechanism.The first part is an overview of food safety supervision mechanism. It defines the basic concepts of food safety, food safety supervision, food safety supervision mechanism, etc., and discusses that the market failure caused by insufficient information, externality, and social injustice is the reason for implementing the supervision mechanism. It briefly introduces three supervision mechanisms including food safety administrative supervision, food industry self-regulation and food enterprise self-supervision, as well as their advantages and disadvantages.The second part studies the status quo of the food safety supervision mechanism in China. It summaries the evolution of China's food safety administrative supervision mechanism, and points out that the administrative supervision system mainly includes food safety risk assessment, mandatory disclosure, food safety standard setting, prior approval, and food recall, etc. The problems existing in the supervision mechanism are fragmented administration, unclear authority, lack of regulation, local protectionism and so on. The problems existing in the supervision system are that, the food safety risk assessment is not yet fully implemented; the food safety standards, food recall system and food safety dissemination mechanism still need to be improved. The problems existing in the food industry self-regulation mechanism are that, the industry responsibility and integrity management fails to perform, the industry information communication is insufficient, the industry standards of safety are inadequate. China's food enterprise self-supervision, mainly including full-time quality inspector system, enterprise food standards, good agricultural practices, good manufacturing practices, hygienic standard procedure, hazard analysis and critical control point system, good hygiene practices, etc., still has the problems of the weak sense of integrity and responsibility, invalid self-regulation, and rather low cost of violations. The third part discusses improving food safety supervision mechanism. To the mechanism in China, at present, the Food Safety Commission should make full function, strengthen the coordination and avoid supervisory loopholes; in the future, it should establish the food safety supervision mechanism of " the supper ministries system" based on the global trend of functional integration; should strengthen the application of food safety risk assessment mechanism, speed up further the process of food safety standards harmonization, improve further the food recall system, increase the punishment of offenders, standardize further food safety information release mechanism, etc., to ensure the realization of food safety administrative supervision objectives. China's food industry self-regulation mechanism should learn from the advanced experience of Japan, Canada, UK food lines and promote strongly the integrity and self-regulation of the food industry and the credit mechanism; establish food information communication mechanisms of related industries; make and develop the industry standards and norms. China's food enterprise self-supervision mechanism should, through improving the market mechanism, accelerate establishing integrity and moral system, encourage and support the enterprises to adopt advanced self-supervision tools, implement the insider reporting system within the enterprises, increase penalties for violations, and promote the development of food industry self-regulation mechanism.