Research On Punitive Damages System Of Food Safety

Perfecting the system of liability or not directly relates to the legal system can be implemented well. At present, our country food security accident emerges one after another incessantly, seriously exposes that the correlation laws and regulations are not perfect in the food security domain and the related legal liability system is imperfect. In our country’s current food safety liability system, administrative responsibility in the system is in a dominant position, and civil liability and criminal responsibility are in a secondary position. Speaking of the administrative responsibility, because of the evidence collection difficulty, the investigation rate low, easy to produce seeks the risk, difficult to effectively stimulate consumer claims, and other reasons. The administrative responsibility as the leading food safety responsibility institutional framework are unable to take on well the heavy responsibility for the food security in our country. However, speaking of the civil liability, because the punitive damage compensate system has the multiple legal functions, such as the compensation, the penalty, the deterrent and the drive, and so on, can enhance the illegal cost effectively and reduce consumer’s cost of rights, realize to the food safe illegal activity powerful rules and regulations, and protect the consumer benefit and the social public interest effectively. Our country "Food Security Method" has established "ten times" punitive damage compensate system, but there are many imperfects in this system, such as the constitution important document imperfect, the penalty dynamics insufficiency, the consumer present evidence the difficulty, unclear definition of the scope of compensation for rights holders, the design of the principle of turning over to the responsibility not science, the civil action procedure mechanism imperfect and so on, so the system is still unable to achieve full, strong regulation of food safety violations. Throughout the world, United States, Taiwan and other have established a relatively sound punitive damages system of food safety, and effectively safeguarded of consumer interests and public interests in their country (region).Such as Japan and Germany, while not clearly established the status of the punitive damages system in the country, but are combined with their national conditions, to establish a relatively complete legal liability system for a strong regulatory for food safety violations. In addition, their judicial practices and theories of punitive damages system have given the more and more high approval and the attention to the punitive damage compensate systems. In view of this, based on the study on the basic theory of a comparative analysis of the damage compensation systems for food safety in the United States and China’s Taiwan, Germany, and Japan and other countries or regions, and to review current legislation of punitive damage system of food safety in China, this article proposes specific recommendations to improve China’s food safety punitive damages system.Except the introduction and the conclusion, this article is divided into three parts.The first part, carries on the concrete discussion to the basic legal principle theory of the food safe punitive damage compensate system. Food safe punitive damage compensate system is one kind of special damage compensate system, and there are many legal characteristics, such as the advocation society standard, attention to subjective malignant food producer, to have the multiplex legal functions, the applicable scope only is restricted in food expense domain and the high degree of importance to the judge’s discretion, and so on. In the rationale, food safe punitive damage compensate system is takes oneself rationale by the social standard theory and the substantive just theory. In the legal function, food safe punitive damage compensate system has the compensation, the penalty, the deterrent and the drive and so on many kinds of legal function.The second part, carries on a comparative analysis of the punitive damages system in the major countries or regions. The section carries on a comparative analysis of the punitive damages system of food security in the United States, Japan, Germany, and China’s Taiwan region, and proposes a useful reference to the punitive damages system of food safety in China.The third part, carries on China’s current legislative review of punitive damages system of food safety, and on the basis of this, proposes recommendations related to the legal system. There are many imperfects in this system, such as the constitution important document imperfect, the penalty dynamics insufficiency, the consumer present evidence the difficulty, unclear definition of the scope of compensation for rights holders, the design of the principle of turning over to the responsibility not science, the civil action procedure mechanism imperfect and so on, so the system is still unable to achieve full, strong regulation of food safety violations, and protects the consumer benefit and the social public interest effectively. The punitive damages system of food security in future should be a compensation calculation mode of comprehensive which gives the judges a discretionary power to play to the full amount of damages, takes into account of the amount of compensation as a basis for the calculation of compensation, sets the maximum amount of compensation, and takes into account a variety of factors. Meanwhile, the future legal changes should be attributed responsibility elements, principles, right to compensation, as well as the range of civil procedure, such as mechanisms for the current punitive damages of the food safety system in our country to perfect.