Research On Punitive Compensation System Of Food Safety In Civil Public Interest Litigation

Illegal and criminal acts in the field of food are mainly punished by means of two-way connection between administrative law enforcement and criminal justice and joint crackdown.The loss of the injured consumers is compensated by filing private interest litigation.However,the consequences of food safety are often hidden,long-term and irreversible,and traditional governance methods are difficult to effectively deal with and prevent.In order to protect national interests and social public interests,the public interest litigation system was fully promoted in 2017,in which food safety was included in the category of public interest litigation protection in the form of law as a key protection area.In the face of frequent large-scale and mass food safety public events,in May 2019,the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued " Opinions on Deepening Reform and Strengthening Food Safety Work," pointing out that it is necessary to explore the establishment of a punitive compensation system for food safety public interest litigation,and provide policy guidance for the extension of punitive compensation from private interest litigation to public interest litigation.The application of punitive damages system in civil public interest litigation of food safety not only makes up for the problems of insufficient motivation,poor effect of rights protection and narrow coverage of private interest litigation,but also provides new ideas for punishing wrongdoers,purifying food trading market and safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of many unspecified consumers.However,the system of punitive damages in the field of food is still in the exploratory stage.The provisions of laws and judicial interpretations on the request for punitive damages through civil public interest litigation are not clear enough,which leads to different understandings of the application of punitive damages in theory and practice.Differences in understanding not only lead to differences in referee results,but also affect the actual effect of food safety public interest protection.This paper demonstrates the legitimacy of the application of punitive damages system in food safety civil public interest litigation from four dimensions : legal basis,normative foundation,functional value and practical basis.After examining the practice pattern,it is found that the right to claim punitive damages in public interest litigation faces dual obstacles in entity and procedure,the dilemma in the determination of the amount of compensation,the unclear application conditions,and the unreasonable management and use of punitive damages.After investigating the legislative experience and judicial practice of countries outside the two legal systems,combined with China ’s national conditions,it provides some new ideas for improving the application of punitive damages system in civil public interest litigation in the food field : from the legal point of view,combing the source path of the plaintiff ’s right to claim punitive damages in public interest litigation,so as to give it the subject qualification to claim punitive damages at the legislative level;build a scientific calculation standard system of punitive damages;refine the constitutive elements of punitive damages in public interest litigation;explore the special public interest litigation fund management model,in order to properly solve the current dilemma faced by punitive damages in the application of public interest litigation.