Research On Public Participation In Food Safety Risk Regulation

Public participation has become the inevitable choice in the regulation offood safety risk. Public participation and Ladder Theory provide a theoretical basisfor the analysis of the extent and approaches of public participation. From theperspective of information, the three stages of public participation that is informationdisclosure, opinions expression and Decision-making instructions or informationfeedback, exposes that information is the basis for the public participation, thateffectiveness of public participation depends on the timely and accurate transmissionof information, and that the public participation in food safety risk regulation providesthe links among the government, public and Social intermediary organs. Based on theanalyses above, this paper proposes a framework which is ladder—subject, to analyzethe oughtness of public participation and food safety risk regulation, as well as theexisting conditions of public participation from the practice perspective. Through thecomparison of oughtness and practice, the paper discloses that the problem in thepublic participation presently is the law transparency of participation, the inadequaterepresentation of public participation, the poor responsibility of participation and theweak sustainability of participation. Therefore, the paper suggests that we shouldimprove the consumer-centric and public oriented information release system, andbuild the select system of public representatives, and improve the incentive system ofsubject of public participation as well as the relief system of public participation.