Food Safety Regulation In Food Industry And Food Safety Activity In Food Enterprises

Food safety is the keystone to improve life standard of human being and important to the development of whole society. Based on the economic theory of regulation, management activity and transaction cost, the paper studied the food safety regulation on food industry and discussed the activity of food enterprises. Based on proposing the theory of "food ternary", food was distinguished as three categorise of safety food, ordinary food and sham food. Firstly, analyzed the ternary structure of food industry and food consumption; secondly, proposed 3 ways to transform ternary structure into unitary one, such as supporting the expand of production scale of safety food producers, strengthening guide on ordinary food and chastising sham food producers; thirdly, indicated that China's safety food market was in a growth stage and required more fostering. Food safety management path selection model is proposed for the first time, and based on the model management paths of food safety include laissez-faire, regulation and litigate. Results showed that the choice of management path was decided by a country's law environment and market order. When law system and market order was low-level, laissez-faire possibly was superior to regulation and litigation. When law system and market order were mature, litigation was the best choice. When law system and market order were in medium degree, regulation was more efficient and helped forstering market. China's law system and market order belonged to the medium degree; the government needed to strengthen food safety regulation to guarantee consumer's health. On the assumption that regulation is to make up market failure, the paper proposed 3 rules for choosing key food safety regulation fields. The key food industries needing stricter regulation were those whose products are consumed by weak crowds, with higher asymmetrical information and with higher risks based on risk evaluation. Different kinds of food safety regulation modes imposed different effects and intervention on food industry and consumers. The paper evaluated the economic impact of different food safety regulation. Based on research results, the effect degree of different regulation modes on industry was sorted in a descending sequence, that was information-supply driven mode, compulsory information disclose mode, product performance regulation mode, process regulation mode and overall process control mode. From the angle of economic efficiency, the most superior regulation mode was information-supply driven mode. However, in practice, the driven mode could not be efficient because of the information symmetry. Actually, the food safety regulation development tendency in the world was: product performance regulation mode →process regulation mode →entire process control mode, which meant that governments in the world strengthen the control on food industry to assure food supply system safe. The results showed that regulation of food industry influenced the development of food industry in 3 ways. First, regulation promoted concentration of food industry; secondly, strengthened vertical ooperation within the food industry chain; thirdly, increased international market competitive power of food industry. Based on proposing these theories, the paper evaluated "QS"admittance system. First, QS possessed the characteristic of process regulation and imposed higher intervene to small-sized enterprises; second, QS system helped enlarge the size of enterprises; third, QS could put an obvious influence on market competition pattern; fourth, the influence of QS was different to different kinds of food enterprises; fifth, in short time QS could not influence the quantity of food supply, but in a long term, it would promote the increase of food supply. The domestic and foreign experiences of food safety regulation were compared. First, analyzed the experience of 8 typical countries like European Union, United States, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc; second, summarized the experience of Sichuan, Beijing, Anhui, Shanghai, Zhejiang, etc; third, considering the achievements of drug regulation, and based on referring to a great deal of materials, summarized 20 pieces of experiences of drug regulation. Food enterprises'food safe action decision-making mechanism was discussed.The major decisions on food safety action were categorized in 3 kinds: negative action, ordinary action and positive action. The choice of the 3 decisions depended on 2 factors. One factor was enterprises'anticipation on the economic benefit of food safety. The other factor was the compare between the costs of obeying regulation and the costs of defying regulation. If enterprises considered that food safety activity helped improve economic benefit, then no matter there were food safety regulations, enterprises would take positive food safety activity. Whereas, if enterprises anticipated that food safety action could not bring any benefits, then enterprises'action depended on the compare between the obeying costs and defying costs. If the obey costs were more than the defying costs, they might take negative food safety; or else, they might take ordinary action. The paper provided a method, based on which food safety activity modes can be effectively discussed. And based on the method, 2 kinds of activity modes of implementing HACCP in China's food enterprises were differentiated for the first time. The results of empirical study showed that more food enterprises (making up 66.7%) in China took HACCP as a kind of tool, and hoped that HACCP could help enterprises control microbe, improve quality, acquire admittance of domestic market and improve benefits; the other enterprises (33.3%) took the implementation of HACCP as a part of enterprise strategy, hoping HACCP could help improve enterprise's fame and gain competition predominance. Costs and benefits associated with the implementation and operation of HACCP in the China's food enterprise were analyzed. Based on first source materials, the paper analyzed enterprises'characters operating HACCP, such as enterprises'structure, product type and target market. Results showed that the enterprises implementing HACCP mainly were big and middle-sized enterprises; and acquiring admittance in foreign market was one of the major incentives. Based on this, 12 meat produce enterprises were investigated to analyze the costs and benefits of implementing and oprating HACCP. Results showed that: 1) Costs and benefits were quite different among enterprises; 2) Major costs of applying HACCP in meat product industry was staff training and investment in new equipment; 3) Major costs of operating HACCP were product testing and staff time in documenting system; 4) Difficulties during implementing andoperating HACCP were related with people, such as how to train staffs and incentive managers; 5) The most important benefit was the enhanced ability to retain existing customers; 6) The benefits gained by enterprise were not consistent with their anticipation, which showed that most enterprises might misundestand the function of HACCP. Based on all the above research results, the paper proposed 9 pieces of advise, such as allocating regulation resource efficiently, establish a food safety committee guided by prime minister, paying more attention to envaluate regulation policies to assure their feasibility, guiding and training small sized food enterprises, strengthening information regulation, perfecting food supply system in countryside, expanding HACCP implementation in China and speeding cooperation in more fields between regulation organizations and food enterprises.