Research On Legal System Of Food Safety Risk Assessment

With the development of food industry in recent years, food trade has become increasingly prosperous throughout the world. At the same time, a variety of food incidents happen frequently, which greatly affect the development of the world economy. Countries around the world begin to realize that it is necessary to reform their food safety monitoring system.As a new technical means to deal with the food safety issues, Food safety risk assessment is widely respected worldwide. Compared with the previous systems, this system is both scientific and preventative. By supervising every stage of food production, it can effectively control the occurrence of potential food safety risks. The European Union, the United States and Japan are the pioneers of this system. They all have had a complete food safety legislation, and also established specialized institutions to engage in risk assessment. Since2009, China had gradually advanced the legislation of food safety, and initially established our system of food safety risk assessment. However, compared with developed countries, there are still many defects due to the late starting. Therefore, it is necessary for us to study risk assessment systems of other countries, and draw on their advanced experience so as to to deal with increasingly complex food safety issues.By comparative and normative approach, the author discusses the legal system of food safety risk assessment, in order to put forward some feasible proposals to perfect the legal system of food safety risk assessment in our country.In addition to the introduction and conclusion, this thesis is divided into four parts.In The first part, the author introduces the basic theory of food safety risk assessment including the definition, the principle, and the significance of the system. Food safety risk assessment refers to estimating the probability of having adverse effects for human body, which are caused by some injurious factors contained in food, and the effects. The whole process of food safety risk assessment should be open, independent and scientific. The perfection of this system can effectively prevent human body from being seriously harmed by food safety problems, meanwhile, provide a theoretical foundation for the government to adopt correct management measures. Besides, it can also promote the development of Chinese food trade.In the second part, the author analyses the laws and regulations, institutional settings and operating mechanisms on food safety risk assessment system of the European Union, the United States and Japan, then summarizes their experience accumulated in the process of risk assessment. All these countries have various legislation forms on food safety risk assessment. The laws which are easy to operate almost involves every aspect of food safety; the establishment of risk assessment institutions is complete and of great independence.The countries also pay attention to the perfection of relevant mechanisms of risk assessment, especially the role of risk communication in promoting assessment work. All these facts indicate that we should continuously improve food safety legislation, institutional settings, and attach importance to developing the risk communication.In the third part, through analysing relevant laws and regulations, the author describes the current situation of food safety risk assessment of our country and summarizes the disadvantages of this system as follows. Firstly, technical regulations and operable norms of food safety risk assessment are lacked. Secondly, the risk assessment institutions are not independent enough, and the settings are imperfect. Thirdly, this assessment is lack of specific operating procedures, information distribution procedures, and supervising procedures. In addition, the relevant mechanisms of risk assessment should be completed, for example, risk communication is not smooth, risk monitoring is not comprehensive and an unified food safety standard is lacked.In the last part, the author puts forward suggestions on how to improve Chinese food safety risk assessment system. Firstly, more operable norms should be set by providing the scope and specific operating rules of risk assessment; Secondly, the independence of the risk assessment institution should be strengthened by providing it with adequate funds and giving it power to start the assessment independently; Thirdly, the procedures of risk assessment should be improved by establishing various informative communication channels and public supervision procedures. Lastly, risk monitoring and risk communication works and should be developed by establishing information exchange and sharing mechanism.