Research On Governmental Responsibilities For Food Safety Standards Management In China

Food safety problems became the focus among government, media and the public after the Sanlu milk powder incident. Then news about food safety appeared constantly in the public view. This series of food safety incidents exposed dereliction of governmental responsibility in food safety standards management. Based on this point, this paper will research on governmental responsibilities in food safety standards management.At the beginning of writing, there were two starting points. The first one was that if the government is in a dominant position in the management of food safety standards, where the dominance can be revealed. The second one was why food policies have little effect in the standards management, in another word, why the government couldn’t grasp the key point and what the reason was.With the above two considerations, the paper analyzed the necessity of the government in food safety standards management by making use of the theory of market failure, government function and the national trade. Then the author analyzed from three aspects. Firstly, combined with governmental law responsibility, administrative responsibility and moral responsibility, the paper clarified the concrete responsibilities in food safety standards operation process--standards making, standards execution and standards feedback. Secondly, the paper analyzed the manifestation of dereliction of governmental responsibility in the standards management, by using the case study. Thirdly, at the experience of United States and European Nations, the author put up with the solutions, i.e., construction of law government, responsible government, and moral government.In the concrete analysis, the author mainly adopted comparative analysis and cases study, to give the descriptive analysis and explanatory analysis to the governmental responsibilities in food safety standards management.