Analysis On The Reform Of Food Security Legal System In China

Recent years, more and more Chinese have turned their eyes on food securitybecause of the worsening food security environment. In order to ensure the security offood and strengthen the confidence of consumer, Chinese government once enactedits Food Security Law which is useless in the year of2009. However, this year, ascheme on establishing the Food and Drug Administration, raised by the governmentand aimed to integrate relative departments and make the regulation of governmenton food security more effective during the process of producing, transporting andconsuming, draws people’s attention from all sides, and now they are all with fullhope on how this administration works on duty arrangement of relative departments.In fact, there is also a food security crisis in Japan in the1950s and1960s, but theproblem is solved gradually. Due to great and timely changes made by thegovernment on legislative intent, regulatory duty, food security standards andeducation, Japan walks out from the shadow of the food security crisis and takes theirconfidence on food security back. So we can perfect our own food security regulatorysystem by taking Japanese’s as reference. First, we should focus on the food securityregulator. For years, we insist on the segregate regulatory system which brings aTrojan horse in the regulatory activities. The biggest disadvantage of the system isthat the same duty is taken by different departments. When there is a food securityaffair, there will be either none or all to take responsibility, which is a waste ofjudicial resources. Although the new Food and Drug Administration is established tochange this situation, but it is still not so perfect in my opinion. In Japan, a foodsecurity committee is established to build a bridge between departments andconsumers on food security information communication by unifying all relativedepartments and arranging their duties clearly. Second, our standards on food securityare out of date now. Because of the shortage of professionals and capital, we have aslow standards updating which falls behind the international ones. By contrast, Japanfollows the international rules closely with the help of professionals who they pay alot for training. Meanwhile, Japanese government also value the power of companies and consumers on food security by considering that the crisis rate of food securitywill be reduced with the join effort of companies and consumers when companies payattention to food security and consumers increase their standards on the food productrather than the regulation of government. But in China, there is a shortage of aincentive system for consumers and companies to act on reducing the food securitycrisis, an independent education institute for Chinese to get knowledge on foodsecurity, a prevention mechanism to solve the problem beforehand. While in Japan,there is a complete set of crisis evaluation system and new regulatory method whichcan help to prevent the crisis in advance and location crisis source on time when thereis a food security crisis. In this way, the government can control the influence of thecrisis. To my view, we can perfect our own food security regulatory system by takingJapanese’s as reference, so I take full use of my good knowledge of Japanese to findout the advantage of food security regulations in Japan and study on differences onthe food security status between China and Japan in order to perfect our food securityregulation system by covering the shortage of laws, regulator, prevention mechanism,self-regulation and education on food security.