Study On Food Safety In China To Determine The Amount Of Punitive Damages

In recent years, the increasing problems of food industry in China seriouslythreating basic human right of living and health, and therefore the related laws offood safety are undergoing test. Traditional civil law mainly applies compensatorydamages for civil indemnification, however the limited homogeneous compensationscould no longer adapt to the increasingly complex food industry. The punitivedamages, based on which have multiple functions to infringement behavior such aspunitive, containment and encouraging, are more suitable for the need of socialdevelopments in current phase. Applying punitive damages system appropriatelycould be propitious to stimulate public consciousness of safeguarding legal right; toincrease cost of breaking laws of the offenders; to sanction the fraud; and in order tobetter achieve the value of law.The food itself is a pretty special product, which is closely related to humanhealth. Time of applying the punitive damages system in field of food safety in Chinais short, thus the related regulations are not well developed, for example, the punitive‘twice’ compensation regulation in the law of People’s Republic of China on theprotection of consumers rights and interests;and the regulation of the ‘third times’punitive compensation which is calculated to be500yuan if less than500yuan in themodified version of the law of People’s Republic of China on the protection ofconsumers rights and interests which came into operation at15th of March in2014;as well as the ‘ten times’ punitive compensatory regulation in the law of People’sRepublic of China on food safety. However, blindly using ‘three times’ or ‘ten times’compensation could not meet the demands of individual case, not even make up thelosses of victims, and therefore it can not achieve the expected purpose of thepunitive damages system itself. Punitive sanctions could be light or heavy, which onone hand can embody the unity between criminal severity and punishment intensivelevel that is totally the same with the principle of guilt adapt in criminal laws; and onthe other hand can efficiently restrain and punish malicious criminal issues on food safety. Paying for punitive damages is the most directly punishment and sanction forthe offenders as the amount of punitive damages reflects punishment intensive level,hence the decision on the amount of punitive damages is quite important that it effectsthe realization of the punitive and containment function of the punitive damagessystem. This context introduced some suggestions on deciding the amount of thepunitive damages on food safety according to the current status and features of foodsafety in China in reference to the settings and running status in American, as itsrelated regulations are better developed, in order to deal as well as to solve the foodsafety issues happen frequently in China.