Abstract: Food safety is a national concern. Most governments around the world regard food safety as national public safety and strengthen supervision. On September 1 2004, the State Council issued "the State Council's Decision on Further Strengthening Food Safety Work" and decided to take practical and effective measures to further strengthen food safety work. Food safety involves many departments, levels and links, and it is a complex system engineering. At present, we should establish and improve as soon as possible: the legal system of food safety; A unified and coordinated supervision system with clear rights and responsibilities; Food safety emergency mechanism; A complete and unified food safety standard and inspection and testing system; Food safety risk assessment system; Food safety credit system; Food safety information monitoring, reporting and publishing network system; Nine systems, including the promotion system of intermediary institutions and research units, promote the overall improvement of food safety.
[Keywords:] food safety; System construction; manage
Bread is the pillar of life. Food is the most basic material condition for human survival and development. In China's national economy, the food industry has become the largest industry. According to relevant data, from 1993 to 1998, the total output value of China's food industry increased from 343 billion yuan to 600 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of 12%. In 2003, the total output value of food industry in China exceeded 654.38+0.2 trillion yuan for the first time, far exceeding the total output value of automobile industry of 940 billion yuan. However, the successive vicious food safety accidents in the world and China have aroused people's great concern about food safety, and also prompted governments of various countries to re-examine this issue, which has risen to the height of national public safety, and countries have increased their supervision over food safety.
On April 16, 2003, China State Food and Drug Administration was officially listed, which marked that China's food safety work entered a new stage of combining comprehensive supervision with specific supervision, and also showed the determination of our government to keep pace with the times and do a good job in food safety work. However, since then, negative news about food safety has continued. Through the in-depth follow-up reports of news media, we learned about events such as inferior milk powder in Fuyang, paraffin bottom material in Chongqing hot pot, inferior floss in Taicang, and "fat miscellaneous" Longkou vermicelli in Shandong. According to media reports, a survey on food safety recently completed by the Social Investigation Center of China Youth Daily shows that the recent frequent food safety incidents have aroused widespread public concern. 82% of the public said that these incidents "will definitely" cause their own concerns about food safety around them, 13% said "possible". Compared with developed countries, China's current food safety supervision started slowly and there are many problems. The main reason why China's food safety problems are repeatedly banned is that China lacks a complete food safety guarantee system. We believe that for a long time to come, China should take the establishment of China's food safety guarantee system as the focus and strategic goal of food safety work.
First, basically establish and gradually improve the food safety legal system in China.
According to our preliminary statistics, since 1949, there have been as many as 840 laws, regulations, rules, judicial interpretations and various normative documents related to food safety promulgated by Chinese authorities at or above the ministerial level. Among them, there are 107 basic regulations, 683 special regulations and 50 relevant regulations; There were 7 articles before the Cultural Revolution (before May 1966), 1 before the reform and opening up (before February 1978) and 832 articles after the reform and opening up (after February 1978). 1979 On August 28th, the State Council promulgated the Regulations on Food Hygiene Management in People's Republic of China (PRC) (now invalid), and on June 28th, the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) promulgated the Law on Food Hygiene in People's Republic of China (PRC) (for Trial Implementation) (1982+065438+1October 9th, the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC)). These three legal provisions have successively formed the core of China's food safety legal system after the reform and opening up, and played an important and irreplaceable role in China's food safety.
However, with the rapid development of economy, society, science and technology, and the deepening of people's understanding of food safety issues, some aspects of China's current food safety legal system can no longer meet the development needs of today's food safety situation. As the core of the food safety legal system, the Food Hygiene Law has also declined in its guiding role to other laws, regulations and normative documents within the system. The main reasons include:
First, the scope of adjustment of the Food Hygiene Law and other laws and regulations is too narrow. Article 4 of the Food Hygiene Law stipulates: "Anyone who engages in food production and marketing within the territory of People's Republic of China (PRC) must abide by this Law." It can be seen from this article that the concept of "food" in the Food Hygiene Law is narrow, and it does not include the food in cultivation, breeding and storage, and the production, management or use of food additives, feed and feed additives related to food. Food safety itself covers the whole process from farmland to dining table, and the law should reflect the whole biological chain of food in this process. Only adjusting the legal relationship of food safety in the stage of food production and operation leads to a large blind spot of legal supervision, which leads to the lag and ineffectiveness of government departments in supervising many problems such as adding lean meat powder to feed, a large number of pesticide residues, abusing antibiotics, food storage pollution and so on.
Second, the main responsibility of law enforcement determined by the Food Hygiene Law is out of touch with the actual situation. According to Article 3 of the Law: "The health administrative department of the State Council is in charge of the supervision and management of food hygiene throughout the country. The relevant departments of the State Council are responsible for food hygiene management within their respective responsibilities. " but