Research On The Role Of Government In The Regulation Of Food Safety In China

With China’s rapid economic development and social progress, China’s food market shows a complicated scene. The abundant variety and the great quantity of food reveal the prosperity of the food market. In such a situation, how to ensure food security has become the focus of the whole society. Food safety is not only related to people’s physical health and safety, but also closely related to social stability and national development. However, the frequent occurrence of food safety incidents have always been challenging the public confidence in the food market and governmental regulatory ability in food safety. The current food safety regulatory model no longer adapt to the rapid development of food market, thus it should be further improved. During the12th National People’s Congress,’food security’has become one of the hottest issues, and the new institutional reform program also made a major adjustment in terms of food safety regulatory agencies and functions. It is clear that food safety regulatory issue has become our government’s significant problem which is needed to be addressed urgently.In this paper, the four levels of’role theory’in sociology, i.e. role expectation, role playing, role disorders and role of integration have been used as the analytical framework to given in-depth, detailed analysis of government’s role in food safety supervision. This paper illustrates the necessity of the existence of the Chinese government in food safety supervision from the role expectation level, and elaborates the roles that our government plays in the food safety regulatory—law makers and law enforcer on the basis of two aspects of role playing (i.e. role orientation and role practice). Then, this study takes’Melamine milk powder’incident case as the major example to analyze the problems existing in the food safety regulatory issues of our government’s role in terms of the legislative role and the role of law enforcement and also analyze the associated reasons. Finally, this paper proposes countermeasures and suggestions to improve our government’s role in food safety regulatory from three levels, i.e. the role of awareness, role of reconstruction and role delivered, by combining with the international advanced food safety regulatory experience.