Study On Advantages Of Social Intermediary Organization: Involved In Food Safety Governance Of China

Food safety is related to people’s livelihood, economic development, and social harmony.With all kinds of food safety incidents occurred in this period of social transition,‘Clenbuterol’, Gutter oil’,‘Melamine’,‘Tonyred’ and other terminology have beenrecognized. Different social sectors show high attention and deep concern to food safety.Through network, Media research laboratory of Tsinghua University carried out theinvestigation about ‘the sense of food safety’ of31provinces, municipalities and autonomousregions in two consecutive years, but the results showed that the public concerned more aboutfood safety. As the main body of public administration, the government has to bear heavyresponsibility. The government has taken a series of measures to improve the level of foodsafety governance. For example, some relevant laws and regulations have been enacted, lawenforcement has been increased, and food safety regulators have been reformed. But subjectedto some factors, the efforts are not obvious. Therefore, looking for the ‘helper’ seems to be theinevitable choice of the government, and explore the third path of food safety governanceactively thus became a major research topic, also most scholars have been aware theimportance of social intermediary organizations in the field of food safety governance. Whenthe food safety incident occurs, it always involves many people, broad geographic reach, andhuge harm. Social intermediary organizations are developing rapidly, increasing fast andexpanding widely. All these advantages can be the effective complementary to the governmentover the organization. At the same time, the social intermediary organization with theadvantages of flexibility, professional, and high efficiency, which are adequate response to thegovernment with the disadvantages of mandatory, one-way, and low efficiency. In order to supervise the food safety together with government and market, it is necessary to make anin-depth study on the advantages and functions of the social intermediary organizations in thefood safety management.Based on the definition of ‘social intermediary organizations’,‘food safety’ and otherrelevant concepts, also the related theories, the present status of the food safety in China isanalyzed, and the effectiveness together with the necessity of government intervention in foodmarkets are been recognized. In the mean time, the defects of the government’s unilateralgovernance are pointed out, including regulatory role predicament, inadequate regulatorypower, low regulatory efficiency, and low regulation ability. Combined with the cases to provethat because of lacked independence, authority, and autonomous ability, it is difficult to play ofthe social intermediary organization’s advantages in the case of the governmental unilateralgovernance. But the unique advantages including high efficiency, low cost and optimalresources should be recognized, also functions of social intermediary organizations can’t bedenied, which including cultivating the whole society’s awareness of food safety, helping thegovernment to improve food safety performance, and promoting the enterprises to improve thequality of food safety. In order to resolve the plight of the social intermediary organizations,relevant countermeasures to enhance the capacity of social intermediary organizationgovernance are put forward, which is based on the actions of the social intermediaryorganizations in foreign countries and the reality of our domestic: The relationship betweensocial intermediary organizations and the government need to be clear, favorable externaldevelopment environment need to be built, and the ability of themselves need to be promoted.