Problems And Improvements Of Judicial Interpretations Of Crimes Against Food Safety

In recent years,crimes against food safety have become a typical representation of a risk society.Recurring problems with the food that people rely on for survival have seriously impeded the orderly operation of society and violated the personal rights and interests of citizens.In 2013,the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued the Interpretation on Several Issues concerning the Application of Laws in Handling Criminal Cases Endangering Food Safety(Judicial Interpretation [2013] No.12),which has 22 articles in full,further detailing Article 143 and Article 144 of the Criminal Law,such as the types and methods of the two crimes,the minimum amount of fines,and the accomplice in crimes against food safety.However,it can be seen from the specific provisions and the corresponding ruling cases that many provisions in Judicial Interpretation [2013] No.12 deviate from the principle of statutory crimes and penalties,and legislative,formal,abstract,and imbalance problems appear.Based on the comparison of the provisions in the judicial interpretation [2013] No.12 and the relevant judgment cases,it can be concluded that:Firstly,the judicial interpretation of Article 14 affirms the establishment of one-sided accomplices in the field of crimes against food safety,which is contrary to the general provisions of the criminal law that require “the accomplices has a common criminal intention”;Secondly,item 3 of Article 20 of judicial interpretation adopts the formal standard of “prohibited substances are poisonous and harmful”,which makes it easy to identify food additives as the object of the crime of producing and selling poisonous and harmful food,which conflicts with the nature of the crime of producing and selling food that does not meet the safety standards in Article 8 of judicial interpretation;Thirdly,Article 1 of judicial interpretation originally intended to specify the unified conviction standard and standardize the scope of crimes.However,due to the abstraction of the word "serious" in Items 1 and 4,the new uncertainty resulted in the great difference in judicial practice,which blurred the boundary between illegal acts and criminal acts;Finally,Article 17 of the Judicial Interpretation takes “production and sales amounts”as the standard and stipulates that the fine “generally should be punished by more than twice theproduction and sales amount”.However,due to the provisions of the lower limit and the no upper limit of the “general should”,the penalty gap in judicial practice is too large,moreover,this is not consistent with the standard of "the amount of goods produced" in the food safety law,which leads to the contradictory trend that the administrative penalty is higher than the criminal penalty.Therefore,due to the problems of lawmaking,formalization,abstraction and imbalance existing in the provisions of judicial interpretation [2013] No.12,it is difficult to unify the recognition basis and sentencing scale of crimes against food safety in judicial practice.The development of the absolute legality of crimes and penalties to the relative legality of crimes and penalties reflects the country's diligent pursuit of refined theory and standardized application,and it shows the progress of a country's rule of law and the improvement of social civilization.In the era of constant renewal of concepts,technology and other elements,the stability of legislation,the limitation of articles and the multiplicity of semantics determine the necessity of judicial interpretation.The principle of statutory crimes and penalties is the fundamental principle of criminal activities,judicial interpretation,as an effective basis for clarifying the application of justice,and a basic way to implement the principle of the statutory crimes and penalties,shall strictly abide by the principles of legality,rationality,clarity,and unity of legal order.Based on the principles of legality,rationality,clarity,and unity of legal order that judicial interpretation should follow,Judicial Interpretation [2013]No.12 should improve its deficiencies from the following aspects:First of all,judicial interpretation should strictly abide by the criminal law theory and legislative provisions.In this regard,the special provisions of "knowing type" accomplice which are inconsistent with criminal law theory should not be retained in judicial interpretation;Secondly,the formal regulations of "prohibition is poisonous and harmful" can easily lead to banning in practice based on industry norms,but it is virtually impossible for poisonous food additives to be included in the punishment range of crimes,which obviously does not meet the citizens generally expected and common sense in society,we should distinguish the two from the essential concept of "poisonous and harmful non-food raw materials" and the types of food additives prohibited;Thirdly,the function and purpose of judicial interpretation is to clarify the content of the provisions,avoid the ambiguity of theprovisions,it should set scientific quantitative indicators to replace the provisions that "severely exceed the standard limit";Finally,the provisions of the administrative fine and the criminal fine are inconsistent,the legal evaluation and punishment mechanism are misplaced,the criminal acts endangering food safety cannot be effectively combated,and good social effects cannot be formed.On this basis,the applicable standards of the two should be unified,and the corresponding penalty range should be set.