Foreign Food Tort Liability Of Private International Law Research

The food industry, as an essential part of national economy serves anfundamental role in satisfying people’s basic needs. And people aredemanding for food of higher quality and standard.After the Sanlu milk powder incident, a great amount of domesticconsumers abandon domestic products and look to the "internationalbrands".The safety of imported food not will not only affect the internationalfood trading, but also the political interests among different countries.Moreover, defected imported food will cause tremendous loss toconsumers. Chinese consumers are disadvantaged to confront thepowerful multinational companies when in disputes, under whichcircumstances an equal negotiation is very difficult. Even resorting tocivil lawsuit, the cost and the process can be heavy and cumbersome.And the plaintiff may end up being in awkward situation where he maywin the case but lose his money. This phenomenon originates from the China’s imperfect consumerprotection legislation. According to the existing rules of Chinese conflictlaws, the Chinese legal system can be applied in most occasions. TheChinese consumer protection law is imperfect, the protection level ismuch lower than foreign countries. In practice it has ignored thedistinction between foreign consumption infringement and ordinary civiltort, and turns its back to the particularity and complexity of the foreignconsumption infringements. Therefore, to improve the domestic tort lawsystem controlling the foreign food is of particular and vital importance.This article is divided into three parts, except the introduction andconclusion,The first chapter puts forward the problem. First, it gives thedefinition of tort liability of the foreign food at the legal level, then givesa detailed exposition of the status of Chinese judicial practice fromaspects of the current situation and development of the tort system inforeign food and its problems.Chapter Ⅱ compares the foreign product liability legal system both in the United States and Europe. It starts from the United States, theanalysis of the evolution begins from "the First Restatement of ConflictLaws" to "The Second Restatement of Conflict Laws", then analyze theEuropean rules from the traditions to the modern times. It carries on theoverview of the legal rules in the "Hague Convention", and finally gives aconclusion of the international legislative trends;The chapter Ⅲ talks about how to improve the International Law onforeign food tort law system. This chapter first describes the theoreticalbasis of the tort law system of foreign food, followed by someconstructive suggestions to improve the domestic tort law system offoreign food.