On The Legal Liability System Of Food Inspection And Testing Institutions In China

Food inspection is the important line of food safety.The legal responsibility system of food inspection agencies play an important role in the protection of food safety and the legitimate rights and interests of consumers in order to enhance the regulatory power.Frequent food quality and safety accidents exposed the defects of China's food inspection and testing system:Specification of legal liability system is not perfect,which is lack of systematicness and integrity;Legal subject status and the division of responsibility is not clear;Little attention is payed to the civil liability,which makes the function of compensation and reliefs can not play well;The administrative responsibility and the implementation of qualification penalty should be improved;The criminal responsibility seems unlikely to work;The legal responsibility of supporting system including the consciousness of legal responsibility,the credit mechanism and the information network platform construction is lagging behind,and so on.Many measures should be adopted to improve the legal responsibility system of food inspection agencies in China:A monitoring system with clear responsibility should be established,which should draw a clear distinction between the statutory inspection and entrusted inspection;Laying stress on the full control of food quality and safety is to construct a dynamic and whole food safety inspection and testing system.It is important to integrate the civil liability system,which consists of the contract liability,imputation principle of tort liability,the type of negligence tort and shared responsibility form.Moreover,the administrative responsibility should be strictly implemented on the food inspection and testing institutions.Furthermore,enhancing the applicability of criminal responsibility is to avoid substituting fines for criminal punishment.Make it clear that the food inspection and testing institutions and their staff members are listed as the subject of the crime of providing false documents.The last but not the least,strengthening food inspection and testing institutions legal responsibility of supporting mechanisms is an effective way,including strengthening publicity and education,improving the consciousness of legal responsibility and self-discipline,integrity of the building of the credit system and effective real-time inspection system of information disclosure.In a word,we should selectively absorb external food safety management experience combined with the practice of China's food inspection and testing to form a food inspection and testing institutions legal responsibility system with Chinese characteristics.