Food Safety Regulation

Recently, with the exposure of food safety accidents, food safety problem has become the focus of social attention. The food safety accidents, especially after the fiscal decentralization policy in the1990s, are increasingly severe. Although the central government try to complete various food safety policies perfectly, the exposure of sanlu milk powder and cadmium rice flowing into the market reflects a problem:food safety accidents is not decreased gradually because of food safety laws and regulations. The enforcement of food safety regulation is in the middle link of Connecting to the food safety regulations and food safety accident happened. So the reason leading to food safety accidents occur frequently is the decline in the implementation of food safety regulation strictly. What factors influence the enforcement of food safety regulation and lead the food safety accidents? The answer to the question is of great importance for the society.This paper is based on how to find and solve the answer to this question. First of all, Based on the need for our research for food safety regulation, the paper trim the related research from the following three aspects:research on the asymmetry information of food safety, food safety regulation system research, food safety regulation game analysis between the related subjects. The information asymmetry of Food safety exacerbates the food safety accidents, but can be reduced though information label, food safety information tracing system and so on. Food safety regulation system mainly analyse the current food safety regulation system, compare the domestic and international food safety regulation system and so on. The conclusion is that the vertical integration and improvement of the joint regulation such as food safety regulation system can reduce the food safety accidents. Food safety regulation game analysis contain the related subjects, the government, enterprises and consumers, media and other related subjects. Analyse the reason of food safety accident between the related subjects. The main conclusions are that the government’s punishment and incentive, regulatory costs, corporate speculation factors effect on the food safety regulation. The food safety problem under the fiscal decentralization policy is a principal-agent relation between three subjects from the central government to the local food safety regulatory agencies to local food production enterprise. So the research on law enforcement of food safety regulation should be throughout the three subjects. There is less research on this aspect and no detailed analysis from predecessor’s research. This article is just from this Angle to establish central government and local food safety regulatory agencies, local food safety regulators and local food production enterprise, two levels of principal-agent relationship, and add the factors influencing the existing food safety regulation system to principal-agent model.Secondly, analyze the existing food safety regulation system, and add influencing factors of food safety regulation to the principal-agent model. In the1990s, the central government adopted the policy of fiscal decentralization. Local governments under the influence of the political centralization and the fiscal decentralization policy, attaches great importance to the local economic development, and even produced only GDP theory. The policy of local government is given priority to with GDP development. This influence is mainly manifested in two aspects:one aspect is the local food safety regulators only unidirectional excitation by the central government which reduce the enthusiasm of the local food safety regulatory agencies to enforce strictly. The other aspect is the "soft constraints" produced by local food safety regulatory agencies in the process of enterprise law enforcement. These two factors are added to the central government and local food safety regulatory principal-agent model, local food safety regulators and local food production enterprise of principal-agent model. The result of model analysis indicate that these two aspects influence the local food safety regulators and food production increase enterprise incentive costs and decline the enthusiasm of food production enterprises in strict accordance with the food safety laws and regulations of production.Thirdly, analyse the cadmium rice events. Trim the process of cadmium rice violation into the market, analyse the information asymmetry theory and principal-agent model analysis of the case. And then analyse the deed of hunan and guangdong food and drug safety regulators and the cause of the outbreak of cadmium rice event.Finally, this article conclusion. The conclusion of this paper is that the one-way incentives from the central government to local food safety regulatory and soft constraint from local food safety regulators to local food production enterprise lead to the food safety problems. Based on these two conclusion, the article puts forward some policy Suggestions, improving the system of information disclosure, the introduction of appropriate incentive mechanism, vertical management and so on.The mainly innovation of the article is to research food safety new angle to analyse food safety probelm. Under the background of the fiscal decentralization, analysis the existing system of food safety regulation can get two factors affecting food safety regulation:the central government’s one-way incentive and local food safety regulatory soft constraints. To add these two factors to the principal-agent model between the central government, local government food regulators, food production enterprises to analyse the reason of food safety accident and a more detailed analysis.