A Research On The Performance Of Food Safety Regulation In Shishi City During The Institutional Reform

This paper studies the performance of food safety regulation in Shishi City that has witnessed two institutional reforms in recent years.The study adopts the methods of case study,participatory observation,interview and second-hand data analysis.It selects two theoretical perspectives,namely the theory of administrative accountability and the theory of street-level bureaucracy as guideline.The performance of food safety regulation is studied from the three aspects in this paper,daily supervision,special regulation and punishment of food violations.Since 2007,Shishi City has gone through two institutional reforms of food safety regulation.Accordingly,this period can be divided into three phrases,the phrase of "Sectional Regulation",the phrase of "FDA Regulation" and the phrase of "Market Regulation".The study finds that the food safety regulation performs better markedly in the phrase of "FDA Regulation" than in the phrase of "Sectional Regulation",while the food safety regulation in the phrase of "Market Regulation" has been weakened afterwards.The reason is that the mode of "FDA Regulation" solves the problem of unclear rights and responsibilities among the regulatory departments,permits the "seamless regulation" of food safety,adapts to the "overall responsibility of local governments",distributes the personnel between the organs and the grass-roots level reasonably,and motivates grassroots performance effectively.Meanwhile,the mode of "Market Regulation" lacks top-level design,challenges professional supervision,causes unclear rights and responsibilities among the regulatory departments,distributes the personnel between the organs and the grass-roots level unreasonably,and is unable to motivate grassroots performance.The article further concludes that there are three common factors influencing the performance of food safety regulation in the two institutional reforms,the matter of rights and responsibilities,distribution of personnel between the organs and the grass-roots level,motivation of grassroots' performance.For the above problems,this paper puts forward a series of optimization suggestions to strengthen the performance of food safety regulation in Shishi City by referring to the advanced practices of other places.The government should rearrange the regulatory bodies and departments at all levels to reshape the food safety regulatory framework.The rights and responsibilities of the food safety regulatory bodies and internal organs should be clearly defined.It is also necessary to increase the allocation of regulatory resources at the grassroots level.A series of measures can be adopted in order to motivate grassroots performance,such as improving accountability,reasonable evaluation,leaning toward grassroots materially and politically,and promoting the integration of the food safety regulatory personnel.