Responsibility Insurance System Of Food Safety Enforcement

In recent years, the public concern about food safety is increasing, but food safety accidents are still frequent. In quite a number of food safety incidents, the victims did not get reasonable compensations, which seriously affected China’s social harmony and stability. This phenomenon not only exposes the serious problems in food safety supervision system in China, but also reflects the food enterprises’ lack of social responsibility, and shows that the development of liability insurance lags behind the development of food industry. Traditional food liability insurance is on voluntary basis, that is, when the insurance applicant or the insurance company refuses to take the insurance, the liability insurance policy objectives are bound to fail. Under this circumerstance, the public authority’s intervention becomes necessary. China has not yet enforced the liability insurance system of food safety and the academic researches for compulsory liability insurance of food safety are rare, therefore, the study of China’s food safety system of compulsory liability insurance is of great importance and urgency to improve the food safety system.This thesis, which focuses on the feasibility of compulsory liability insurance law of China’s food safety system, includes three parts. The first part mainly expounds China’s principles and deficiencies of the existing food safety accident-relief system. The theoretical foundation of the seeking for the compensation from the party liable is the infringement of the defective products, the deficiency of which is that enterprises with weak compensation capacity will be at the risk of bankruptcy. The theoretical foundation of national relief is the nation’s obligation to provide material assistance for members of the society, the deficiency of which is that when the country is under financial stress, it is hard to give effective compensation to the victims. The second part attempts to elaborate on the rationality, necessity and feasibility of China’s compulsory liability insurance law of food safety system, which is the focus of this thesis. The third part puts forward the basic ideas of the food safety system of compulsory liability insurance law, including the principles and forms of legislation, and the contents. When carrying out a food-safety system of compulsory liability insurance, we should not only follow the general principles of legislation, but also be people-oriented which means paying great attention to the social efficiency and keeping balance of the interests of both parties in a scientific and prudent way. It is necessary to modify the Food Safety Act, make compulsory liability insurance law on food safety system clear, broaden the legislative competence in the compulsory insurance, and extend the legislative competence in compulsory liability insurance of food safety to the people’s congress and its standing committee at the provincial level. Food safety legal system should include the ceding insurer of the compulsory liability insurance, the scope of application, the scope of responsibilities and conditions of responsibility and ways of compensation of the insurer, and so on. The content can be available through authorizing the State Council to formulate the Compulsory Liability Insurance Regulations on Food Safety, or authorizing the Provincial People’s Congress and its standing committee to draw up local regulations.