On The Government’s Responsibility For The Food Security

People are fundamental to a country; food is vital to people; security is essential to food. Food security is concerned not only with people’s health and life, but also with the economic and social development and stability, and with the image and international reputation of our government too. The government’s supervision and management is essentially responsible for the food security. If the government’s responsibility is implemented properly, the system of food security will be in organized operation; otherwise, serious consequence would be caused. The consequence would involve the disturbance of the government’s internal responsibility system, such as the supervision department’s "scrambling for power" or "abandoning power", or even the "dysfunction" of the food market and the deterioration of food security situation.Beginning with the analysis of the government’s responsibility for food security, the author tries to explore the range of responsibility taken by the government in food security before probing into the status quo and problems in food security supervision of our country. Combined with the experience in the advanced foreign nations’ responsibility by the government in food security supervision, it is proposed that the perfection of legislation and a complete set of regulatory system are key to the implementation of the government’s responsibility in food security supervision. Afterword, the author put forward a series of measures to improve the government’s responsibility implementation in food security supervision on the basis of our national condition and in combination with the foreign experience. The improvement measures, assisted with the response mechanism and accountability mechanism as the institutional guarantee, are expected to be the final assurance in the government’s taking the responsibility for the food security supervision.Apart from the introduction and conclusion part, the main body of the dissertation consists of five chapters:Chapter One explores the reasons why the government should shoulder the major supervision responsibility in food security, which is based legally on the human rights theory safeguarding the life and health of people, on the government’s intervention in market economy to correct the "market dysfunction", and on the information asymmetry in real life. However, it should also be noted that the government’s supervision in food security could only be within the scope of official duty rather than indefinite.Chapter Two summarizes the status quo and problems in our government’s supervision in food security at present before pointing out that our country’s food security supervision mainly follows the pattern of the old multi-sectoral segmented supervision and the local government taking the total responsibility. A diagram is designed to briefly illustrate the duty assignment of the major supervision subjects. Then it comes to identify the problems existing in our food security supervision. The first problem lies in the legislation of food security, which means the poor operation of the "Food Security Law" mostly due to the overgeneralization of the legislation. For example, there are problems in the supervision pattern, the food safety standard, the food import and export and so on. The second problem lies in the government supervision system, such as the confusion of responsibility, the rough enforcement of law, the insufficient cooperation between the law enforcement agencies, the poor contact between the upper and lower divisions, the overlapping of law enforcement and the absence of response mechanism. The third problem results from the disunity between the power and responsibility of the food security supervision subjects. It leads to a large amount of malpractice like the law-breaking, the loose law enforcement, the acts of failing to punish lawbreakers and replacing regulation with fines, and even the acts of power rent-seeking corruption.Chapter Three makes an analysis of the advanced experience of America, the European Union, and Japan in their food security management. The author, on the basis of our country’s food security supervision problems, selectively examines the supervision system of those advanced countries rather than comprehensive introduction. Through the inspection of the developed countries’ history and status quo, it is found that the unified and complete food security legislation and management, as well as the strict and efficient accountability mechanism, are the key factors to the success of the developed countries’food security supervision. Then, the author analyzes the experience of the developed countries before finally proposing the suggestion appropriate to our country, that is, a complete legal system should be established in the field of food safety, the authority limits of every regulatory agencies should be clearly divided, a perfect and strict accountability mechanism should be set up by the government, etc.In Chapter Four, the author attempts to improve our food security supervision through a series of legislation and institution reform, which is based on the analysis of foreign experience and on the premise of no major variation in our current food security management system. First is the integration of legal resource, and perfection of food security legal system. In specific, the relevant laws and rules should be connected properly to avoid the conflicts; the matching administrative rules, regulations and interpretation, as well as the normative files, should be perfected in order to make the "Food Security Law" be carried out in practice. Second is the perfection of supervision system, improvement of the government’s food security supervision. It involves the perfection of the food safety supervision system, the perfection of the risk management, the exertion of the risk management advantage. Third is about the establishment of food security response mechanism, and the realization of diversified management. It is to enhance the power of consumers to a level that is possible for the competition between food producers and food operators. This measure involves the perfection of food security’s report and supervision system, and perfection of the food security information’s uniform announcement. Four is about the perfection of the government’s accountability system, whose purpose is to restrain the authority, enhance the law enforcement quality. And it involves the establishment of internal accountability mechanism and external accountability mechanism.