| First meeting of The Twelfth National Peoples Congress held in March2013hasconsidered and approved the program--Institutional Reform and FunctionalTransform of the State Council, which sets up State Food and Drug Administration,integrating Responsibilities of Food Safety Office, Food and Drug Administration, foodsafety regulation in General Administration of Quality Supervision and food safetyregulation in SAIC together. This has reflected reforms of the concepts of food safetyregulation in china. Risks in the post-industrial era are uncertainty, so food safetycharacterized by risks of global, uncertainty and difficulties of pursuing theresponsibilities. has broken the shackles of the traditional industrial society.Thesenew features have brought food safety regulators new challenges. Facing thesituation of hard to detection, hard to regulate and hard to penalize, we need toseriously reflect on the evolution of the concept of china’s food safety regulatory.The balance theory in our current food safety regulation is evolved from themanagement theory in the PRC’s early days and the controlling theory in1990s.Compared to the food safety concept in western countries, this kind of balancetheory just focuses on the temporary balance between public rights and privaterights, not more prefer the functionalism on the basis of insisting on the normativism.The core difference is wether based on nomocracy and focuses more on science andreason. However, from a macro point, the food safety concept in our country hassuch defects as valuing the role of government but neglecting the role of market,valuing substantive law but ignoring procedural law, valuing the punishment butneglecting the prevention. These defects lead the inefficient of food safety regulatoryand surge in food safety risks. Hence, considering the rule of law in China is notperfect, reforms of the food safety concept should continue to insist on normativism.Based on nomocracy, control the operation of powers through the formalConstitution and laws; based on rights, guarantee the publics rights to getinformation, participate and supervise and mobilize people’s the enthusiasm ofparticipating the regulatory. In he meantime, aim at the functionalism, set up independent and professional institutions and value the corporation between thegovernment departments, the corporation of the government and the NGOS. Also, aset o f scientific precautionary principles is necessary. We need combine thefunctionalism and the normativism, transfer the concepts, perfect the system to fullyensure the food safety. |
