Ethical Horizon, The Study Of Food Safety Issues In Contemporary China

The topic of food safety, in recent years, has become the most concerned issue amongour nation. Not only does this issue affect the public’s health and safety, impactwhether economy can keep sustainable development and whether the society canremain in everlasting harmony, but more importantly, it is essential to thegovernment’s authority and the country’s image. Hence, it is especially crucial toenforce the scrutiny of food safety, perfect relative laws and regulations and raise thecitizens’ awareness of rights. Mr. Hu Jintao indicated in the18thsession of theNational People’s Congress that it is the government’s priority to guarantee andimprove the people’s livelihood, focus on the most concerned, direct and practicalinterests of citizens and make great efforts for people to live a better life. Food safety,closely linking to everyone’s daily life, is the foundation of the country’speople-oriented proposal and the essential safeguard of people’s livelihood. What isworth considering is that food safety involves a wide range of fields, which requiresthe whole society’s participation. As long as every community member contributessome strength and takes more responsibility, the current problems of food safety couldbe better dealt with; and hence the nation’s living standard could be improved further.This thesis will first illustrate some issues from the perspective of Ethics, includingcountrymen’s concept of life, business operators’ awareness of moral obligation, thegovernmental functional sectors’ regulatory responsibility and consumers’ rightconsciousness, and then analyze the fact that it is individuals’ concept, lack ofrespecting the value of life, the ignorance of right consciousness and the absence ofresponsibilities that are the root of food safety rather than some superficialphenomena, such as lax food supervision and enforcing the law. After using somevaluable experience from some developed nations about food safety issues asreference, this thesis will use principles such as life ethics, economy ethics andpolitics ethics to analyze the issue, and then put forward some possible solutions,including establishing the correct concept of life for the entire nation, raisingparticipants’ moral obligation in food industry, defining the function of relatedgovernmental departments, perfecting relative laws and regulations regarding food,encouraging citizens’ participation and setting up complete supervision mechanismsand so on, thereby achieving the optimization of food safety based on people orientedpolicy, efficiently controlling food risks, ensuring the residence’s well-being as wellas the society and country’s long term peace and stability.