China's Food Safety Control Based On The Perspective Of Supply And Demand

In recent years, China's major food safety issues have frequently happened. The number of food poisoning the Ministry of Health's reported is rising. Food safety problems have seriously affects the public health, industry's sustained development and even social stability. As food is unique, the market can not effectively play the role of optimal allocation of resources, China's current food safety control system is inefficient. Looking at the status quo and foreign researchers, they mostly research from enterprises, consumers and government, which views in a single subject, they hardly research the food safety control from the perspective of supply and demand. The paper is based on the perspective of supply and demand to find out the reason of the current inefficient food safety control as well as improved response.The paper makes use of institutional economics, regulatory economics and econometric analysis. This article analyzes the demand of food safety control from the perspective of externalities, asymmetric information, as well as the theories of public goods, and then shows that increased efficiency of food safety control is the premise to ensure food enterprises to provide safe food from the perspective of supply of food safety control. The developed countries'research in the field of food safety control is earlier than china, they have accumulated a wealth of experience, and this paper selects the U.S. to analyze their food safety control system, in order to construct China's efficient supply of food safety control system as a reference. The paper uses questionnaire survey method to analyze Chinese consumer awareness of food safety situation, the consumer demand for government control, consumer willingness to pay for safer food and its influencing factors. The survey results that consumer awareness of food safety is in a relatively vague state, they have little grasp of food security information, which leads to low willingness to pay for safer foods, there is no effective incentive. Therefore, the Government can provide food safety information to consumers, with the help of market mechanisms to encourage the production of safe food. In addition, because of food market externalities and asymmetric information, consumers are affected by the knowledge, capacity and other constraints, which necessarily require the government's food safety controls to ensure food enterprises to provide safe food. This paper further analyzes the game between companies and regulators, as well as the game between consumers and businesses. The analysis revealed that the Chinese government controls over the supply of food safety can not meet the needs of consumers and businesses. There are problems, such as, insufficient supply and low efficiency. In particular, in the current regulatory system, the motivations for enterprises to evade government controls do exist. Thus the government needs to improve the control mechanisms to improve the efficiency of its control. From the perspective of the supply of food safety control, as there is inadequate and low efficiency in China's food safety control and regulation. The absence of a adequate system and low efficiency in running of system will inevitably lead to frequent accidents. Finally, according to China's current food safety control problems in the supply system, as well as learning from the experience of developed countries in food safety control areas, this paper explores ways to improve China's food safety control system, from the following aspects:improvement of controlling laws and regulations, reconstruction of regulatory agencies, adding of regulatory standards and technical system, construction of controlling education and training system as well as roles that food safety industry association should play.