Rural Food Safety Regulatory Issues

Food Safety Regulation refers to the state administrative departments regulating and managing food production, distribution and catering, which, includes the grant of licenses for the food industry, daily supervision, food quality inspection and imposition of penalty. Whether food safety regulation is effective or not will reflect a government's administrative ability as it will directly influence public safety to which it belongs. With China's increasing emphasis on food safety issues, there have been several repeals and amendments of food safety laws. Based on 1995's "Food Sanitation Law", in 2009, China formulated the "Food Safety Law" which was then amended twice in 2015. In addition to main laws for food safety, food safety regulation and management system reforms. From 1995, Food safety was wholly regulated by the Ministry of Health, but from 2006 to 2015, AQSIQ, SAIC, China Food and Drug Administration were in charge of food production, distribution and catering separately, besides which, primary agricultural products was responsible by the Ministry of Agriculture. With the amendments of "Food Safety Law" in 2015, food safety regulation system is again returned to centralized management, responsible by the China Food and Drug Administration. Despite of the reforms of food safety regulation and legislation system, there are still many hidden risks and problems in the rural areas of China, known as black spots regarding to food safety regulation because of their geographic features, personal qualities of people and other marketing issues. At present, China's rural population accounts for 45.23% of the population (2014 National Economic and Social Development Statistics Bulletin), thus the number of people who are influenced by food safety is large; therefore, ensuring food security in the rural areas is a vital ring of the new rural construction which can not be ignored. Enforcing food safety regulation in rural areas plays a significant part in national food safety management. It is important to the long-term, scientific and sustainable development of our society that the physical and mental states of rural residents stay unharmed. Although currently, there are many academic papers discussing food safety regulation from a macro viewpoint, there are relatively little academic studies focusing on the rural areas. This paper will focus on investigating the present status of food safety in Yueqing (located in Wenzhou) and the existing regulatory dilemma in this region. Combined with the government's public management theory, this article will put forward specific policy recommendations.Under the guidance of the theory of government functions and with combination of the government's public security management theory, this paper will focus on "production-circulation-consumption". By analyzing the current food safety regulation status of Yueqing and drawing lessons from foreign advanced and effective experience, this paper will conclude the difficulties and dilemma rural food safety regulation has encountered in this stage. Additionally, this paper will summarize the reasons causing those difficulties and dilemma in the aspects of history, society, market and regulatory system, combining the author's practical work experience in food safety supervision in rural areas. Accordingly, this paper will then put forward practical reform suggestions on the innovation of regulatory system, the improvement of the training mechanism as well as social supervision, the enhancement of law enforcement ability as well as the legislation system, the advancement of technical skills and so on so forth. Finally, this paper aims to give full play to the government's public management functions in the field of food safety supervision in rural areas and to improve the status of rural food security from a practical and operable level.