The Research On Change And Restructure Of China’s Food Safety Regulatory System

Since ancient times, keeping safety is the Government’s most important commitment for citizens, but frequent public safety incidents watered down the fulfillment of the commitment. Grim security situation reflects the failure of government regulation, while the source is the fragmented institutional structures. Although the Government has put a lot of resources and took frequent reforms,it is difficult to eradicates this institutional weakness. Eighth Session of the Third Plenary Session stress: Establishing a unified regulatory agency and the most stringent regulatory regime. Food safety supervision system, as a key area of government reform, has experienced what changes is worth studying.Research of supervision system in risk society is increasingly valued, so the design of fair and reasonable system path is a new subject in administrative law. Facing the question of "Who is exchanging food security for the nation’s future", there is a rational reason of seeing big things through small eyes to explore the logic of the changes in public law by a single food safety regulatory system in the field.The first part mainly introduces the theory of the regulatory regime change, defines the relevant concepts of regulatory and supervisory system, and analyzes the basis of regulatory authority. To clarify variation of the regulatory regime, it is necessary to discuss the basic concept, such as regulation and regulatory regime. We can gain two inspiration from the US regulatory history: Regulation is inevitable under the governance of the market economy, Government regulation must be constrained by public law. In addition to the analysis of essential elements of the organic law, the effectiveness of regulatory regime also depends on independence, efficiency and professionalism.Institutional Change Theory emphasizes the combination analysis of sudden and gradual change, food safety regulatory reform is a hybrid process of the government’s continuous adjustment and the crisis mutation, so it’s reasonable to apply this theory to study the food safety issues. The evolution process of China’s food safety supervision system roughly experienced three stages, single agency system, multiple agencies system and integrated system. At the same time, regulatory powers changed from simple extensive to refined, and to gradually integrate. Although the process of power allocation which pursues the most optimization has made many achievements, there are all sorts of disadvantages. Combined with the theory of institutional change, we think it has the following features: mandatory changes is the main way, opportunism is common, and multiple agencies adjustment is normal mode. We analyze the characteristics of institutional changes and the dependence of the path, it can always find reasons from the public law system: the lack of the rule of law makes the Government lead the mandatory changes in the long term, the sectoral legislation leads to opportunism’s prevailing, the lack of administrative organization law influences the formation of regulatory law’s joined forces, and the main reason for the intensification of the dependence of the path in the evolution is that the accountability is not very perfect.To break the inertia of thinking of wearing new shoes to walk on the old path, the introduction of the theory of risk regulation is imperative. Justice Stephen Breyer’s Regulation and Its Reform and Breaking the Vicious Circle:Toward Effective Risk Regulation is enlightening for research in the field of regulation. He advocated regulatory power to achieve effective integration and establishing a more centralized administrative organization. Facing the dilemma of the separation of regulatory agencies and the construction of the rule of law, it is essential to strengthen the construction of organization. Legislation is the reliable guarantee for agency authority and enforcement stability. Besides the requirements of legitimacy, fairness, efficiency and science are also necessary. All these will depend on the procedure rules of public participation and regulatory impact assessments to improve.