Review of Food Safety Supervision for the Wholesale Market of Chinese Agricultural Products

Shouli ZHANG, Ming QIN, Zhigang WANG

1. College of Economics and Management, Jilin Agricultural University, Changchun 130118, China;

2. College of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China

With the continuous improvement of living standard,more and more attention has been paid to food quality and safety problems. Especially in recent years,the frequent occurrence of food safety incidents made people attach more and more importance to food safety, who have greatly improved the demands on food quality.Such situation makes the economic order of food industry in China faced with repeatedly challenges,which also causes harm to food industry chains to different degrees,making food safety become the focus of the whole society. Therefore,in this paper we made extensive discussion on the regulation system of food safety with the aim to provide theoretical basis for Chinese agricultural products wholesale markets[1].

Food Safety Supervision and Management Mode in China

Remarkable achievements have been made in food quality and safety supervision in China since the beginning of 21stcentury. For example,market access labeling policy (QS) is introduced to packaged foods; techniques have been applied to produce green and pollution-free agricultural products, and Law of the People’s Republic of China on Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products was come into effect in November, 2006;Food Safety Law and its enforcement regulations were issued and implemented in February, 2009, which strived to eliminate the factors affecting food quality and safety from the source.However,the past food regulation mode in China was typical of segmented model supervision, that is,food safety supervision and management in China was attached to the supervision and management of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Health,the National food and Drug Administration, the State Administration of Industry and Commerce, the Ministry of Commerce as well as the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People’s Republic of China[2]. It indicated that the food safety supervi-sion and management model of China was relatively scattered, which subjected to multiple management. For a long term, the food safety supervision and management system in China was conducted according to the principle of "segmented supervision supplemented with variety supervision"[3],and the food safety supervision and management followed the market concept of limited access with regulators "issuing certificate" as the major regulatory tool[4]. CHEN et al.[5]made an outlook for the development of future food quality and safety certification mechanism based on the summary of the various certification supervision mechanisms, and proposed to further complete the regulation mechanism for the food quality and safety certification to improve the quality and safety level and international competence of Chinese food. Combined with such regulation model of food safety in China,some scholars made exposition and argument from the perspective of theory and method. Some carried out the analysis with the combination of game theory,such as XU[6],who pointed out that food quality and safety regulation was the game process between the relevant government departments and food production operators in nature. Game equilibrium analysis showed that the effectiveness of government regulation depended on continuously decreasing regulation cost,the decrease of extra prospective earnings obtained from the defective foods which were sold as safe food to entrap consumers, as well as increasing the punishment intensity for violations. On the other hand, ZHOU,SONG et al.[7],using incentive compatibility theory, adopted game theory method to analyze the key gist of the establishment of food safety regulation incentive compatibility mechanism in China, discussed the major reason for the lack of incentive and constraint of food safety regulation in China,put forward the main measurements and institutional arrangements for forming incentive compatibility regulation mechanism. And others interpreted the rationality of food segmented regulation from the perspective of supply chain, and insisted on establishing the supervision system consisting of agricultural input, food primary agricultural products, food additives, food relevant products, food processing and food circulation, which were supplemented with corresponding supervision standards to promote the improvement of current regulation model[8].LIU, ZHANG et al.[9]divided the food supply chain into 5 links, 11 steps from farmland to dining table based on food supply chain,and divided the food quality and safety problems appeared in every link of supply chain into 4 categories containing 12 classes according to the nature, and thereby establishing the SC-RC distinction and location matrix for food quality and safety.They systematically analyzed the 1 460 food safety and quality incidents happened in 2010,and with the assistance of SC-RC distinction and positioning matrix for food quality and safety, they conducted the empirical analysis on the weak link and fundamental reasons for the food safety and quality regulations in China.Through the cross-over analysis of matrix model, they succeed in the accurate positioning of 4 critical control points for food safety and quality in China, respectively, improper application amount of elements in deep processing link, unhygienic environment of the staffs in deep processing link,improper packaging of deep processing link, improper application amount of the elements in the primary processing link of agricultural products. In terms of the positioned critical control points, they put forward the countermeasures for food safety and quality control in China. In order to improve the regulation effectiveness of food safety, the state proposed to integrate the functions and jurisdictions among food safety regulation departments in March, 2013. At present, the centralized supervisory of food safety has been initially realized in China. Although the institutional reform was only a partial adjustment based on the original frame, it meant that food safety regulation began a new institutional change in China,and the future reform was aimed to realize centralized supervision, clarify the rights and liabilities among the regulatory departments and gradually reduce the coordination costs.

Defect and Improvement of Food Regulation System in China

People regard food as their prime want,and food quality and safety is related to human health and social harmony.The party and government have attached high importance to continuous occurrence of food safety incidents,and formulated and implemented a series of laws and regulations to ensure food quality and safety, which lay legal foundation for the regulation work of food quality and safety.Through the long-term construction improvement, the food safety legal system has been gradually improved in China, which have made great achievements. Up till now, China has promulgated as many as over 840 laws, regulations, local regulations, judicial interpretations,including 107 fundamental laws and regulations, 683 specific laws and regulations, 50 relevant laws and regulations, forming the food safety laws and regulations system with Food Safety Law, Product Quality Law, Agricultural Products Quality Law as the basic laws, Regulations on Quality and Safety of Food Manufacturing Enterprises, Regulations of Food Label Mark, Regulations on Food Additives as well as various laws and regulations on the technique standards required for food safety as the main body, and the local regulations of local government as the supplement[10]. However, the food safety incidents issued in China exactly reflected the serious defects in the existing regulation systems. Scholars also have made explanations and analysis on these matters,which could be summarized into the following 3 aspects:first, there exist defects in relevant laws and regulations.Since there were multiple regulatory departments, different decision-making bodies for laws and regulations, the law conflicts were very common, causing some opportunistic criminals took advantage of the loopholes of law and leading to the improper responsibility investigation for food quality and safety regulation[11].ZHOU et al.[12]believed that there was a lack of consumer priority principle in the design of food safety regulation system in China, resulting in absenceof government regulation, departmental benefits priority, insufficient punishment for the violations of laws, inefficiency of information exposure,lacking in education of consumers in the food safety supervision in China, which greatly affected the food safety regulation performance in China. Second,the improper institution setup of regulation departments and the coexistence of supervision repetitions and supervision dead zones[13]cause the problems of food safety regulation absence, supervision anomie and supervision inefficiency,which greatly hinder the improvement of food safety regulation performance in China[14]. Third,there is a lack of risk assessment and prediction mechanism, standard confusion of food supervision[15]. Due to the information asymmetry,there is no unified assessment criteria for the government, resulting in the frequent occurrence of food safety problems[16].WANG et al.[17]analyzed the effects of risk communication on food safety control using interactive risk communication as the study framework from the perspective of transaction cost economics.

In view of the above problems,different researchers have different solving ideas. For example, REN, AN et al.[18]carried out the introduction to the theory with the combination of the causes of the appearance of “Sanlu milk powder incident” and the necessity of governmental regulation, compared the differences in the food safety regulation models at home and abroad,and put forward policy proposals including transforming dispersal regulation into centralized supervisory,establishing the 3rd party detection system, strengthening food safety supervision and management in circulation field as well as improving the emergency and security mechanism of food safety. CHEN[19]established the food quality and safety management analysis framework of China based on the “extensive contact, mutual link, dynamic development” between the emergency of food quality and safety incidents and food safety and quality risk,food quality and safety crisis, and established the trinitarian governance system of “food safety and quality risk management, food safety and quality emergency management, food safety and quality crisis management” as the basis policy for the food safety and quality management of Chinese government. LI et al.[20]suggested the domestic vegetable quality supervision should fully learn from vegetables supervision model for Hong Kong model from the aspects of improving food quality standard, strengthening the supervision function, to solve the different problems of “poor convergence, unclear responsibility” in food safety regulation. Agricultural products include edible agricultural products and non-edible agricultural products, so studying the quality and safety supervision on agricultural products is of great significance to food. LI et al.[21]analyzed the major factors in restricting the safety and quality supervision of agricultural products from the prominent problems in agricultural products safety and quality supervision, and put forward the policy suggestions including strengthening the classified management, improving system, enhancing the ability and team building.

Food Safety Supervision System in Circulation Link

In order to meet the requirements for the development under the new situation,Food Safety Law started revision in June, 2013. However, due to situation of disperse, small-scale and extensive characteristics of agricultural products production in China, the related agricultural association as well as cooperation organization are not complete; and the food processing main body with agricultural products as the raw materials also present disperse distribution, and the corresponding food safety and quality regulation model is under improvement. The wholesale market for agricultural products where the agricultural products are centralized exchanged, is the central link for the circulation of agricultural products in China. Therefore, improving the food safety regulation on wholesale market for agricultural products is benefit for the improvement of the food quality and safety level of the whole circulation link and even the food production link. REN, AN et al.[22]through clarifying the supervision process of the wholesale market for agricultural products in Beijing, found that the products entering into the market link had low credibility on food origins certification and quality test qualification, low standardization and normalization in market casual inspection link,small-scale of existing food sample detection and low application rate in market, lagged food safety and quality information network construction in the market and lack of effective interaction. Therefore, they pointed out that the overall level of food safety and quality supervision in the wholesale market for agricultural market remained to be improved. On this basis,AN[23]pointed out that there existed problems of slow information system construction, lack of competent department,nonstandard agricultural circulation standard,and put forward that it required a relevant law to restrict and improve the construction and improvement of the circulation system of agricultural products.

It is very important to strengthen the safety and quality supervision of the agricultural products to enter the market, which is an important link in the agricultural products safety and quality supervision, but also the key to fully implementing the regulations of market access of agricultural products[24]. It requires to establish the access system for agricultural products to enter the market, which could effectively trace the agricultural products in the market. HAN et al.[25]pointed out that we must strengthen the construction of the market access system of agricultural products,increase the public finance input of the local government tot he construct of agricultural products safety and quality detection system,strengthen the macroeconomic regulation and control function of the government in the supervision of quality and safety aspects of the wholesale market, cultivate the farmer professional cooperation organization,implement the standardization and base production,give full play to the leading role of high quality brand. And strengthening source control can eliminate and reduce the unqualified food to enter the market, which could eliminate the hidden trouble of safety from the source, laying the foundation forfood safety. WANG et al.[26]analyzed the current development status and major existing problems in of food safety in the circulation of Dalian, and attached great importance to the source regulation,strict investigation in circulation link from the perspectives of legislation, supervision and law enforcement. In addition, some scholars explored the the current status of agricultural products quality safety and quality supervision and current problems with the risk perception of agricultural products as the breakthrough point using microscopic economic subject[27].

The continuous development of the integration of manufacturing and marketing in agricultural products circulation system in western countries has gradually weakened the role of wholesale market in agricultural products circulation.Therefore,the existing study is rarely involved in the food safety regulation on the wholesale market for agricultural products, but mainly focuses on the product market supervision. The study mainly including 3 aspects. First, cost and benefit analysis on the supervision. On the one hand, food safety supervision will increase the production cost of the food manufacturing enterprise; on the other hand, it could benefit the consumers by avoiding the food safety problems. Therefore, balancing the cost benefit of food safety is one of the focuses of product market regulation.For example, Roberts, Buzby et al.[28],Unnevehr et al.[29], MacDonald et al.[30];Caswell et al.[31]; Messina[32]; Ebell et al.[33]; Lei Fang et al.[34]all carried out relevant study on the cost benefit of food safety problem.Based on the dynamic relationship between market regulations and unemployment rates,Ebell and Haefke combined the job matching model with the monopolistic competition in product market, and individual contract,and assessed the inhibitory effects of product market regulations on unemployment rate using policy test. On the other hand, Lei Fang and Rogerson used the benchmark model of time allocation conducted an empirical study on the relationship between product market regulation and working time, and raised that the product market regulation would increase income transfer, and thus inhibiting the employment of labor force under the effect of elasticity supply of labor force. Second, the internal and external cost of supervision. Basing on the analysis on the variance of internal and external cost in food safety supervision,Kolstad et al.[35]evaluated the policy measures like food safety standard and tortious liability, and put forward that under uncertain conditions, the neglect of responsibility would lead to inefficiency and product standards recognition could correct such invalidity.Starbird[36]analyzed the effects of regulations of punishment and detection on the behavior of food manufacturing enterprises using the expected cost model of the food manufacturing enterprises,and put forward that compared with the external punishment, inner punishment was more effective to incentive food manufacturing enterprises.Third,the supply chain contract.With food supply chain as the perspective, Reyniers and Tapiero[37]analyzed the products quality game between the manufacturer and supplier under the background of cooperation and non-cooperation through introducing the protocols to the supplier such as price cuts and after-sales quality commitment.

Conclusion

Although there are plenty of researches on food safety regulation at home and abroad, which also have achieved a lot, there is relatively few study on food safety regulation on the wholesale market for agricultural products, which put forward countermeasures and suggestions on strengthening food safety and quality supervision for the wholesale market of agricultural products from macroperspectives. Therefore, as far as we concerned, the future research trends of food as far as we are concerned safety regulations for the wholesale market of Chinese agricultural products mainly including the following 3 aspects:

First, the supply and demand of safety supervision system. Studying the food safety supervision regulations on the wholesale market for agricultural products based on the supply and demand of the system could carry out the exploration by combining with empirical analysis methods like cases,mathematical models to explore for the long-term mechanism for food safety supervision in food circulation.

Second, cost efficiency of safety supervision. Based on the cost of supervision, it could study the cost efficiency of food safety supervision by combining with the empirical analysis on the wholesale market for agricultural products to explore effective methods and means for food safety supervision in food circulation.

Third, supervisory system of safety supervision. The wholesale market for agricultural products is an important link in food circulation, and its food safety supervision is the second defensive line to ensure the safety of consumers. Therefore, it needs to improve the supporting food safety supervisory system for the wholesale market of agricultural products. It needs to explore a food safety regulation model which is suitable for the wholesale market for agricultural products to specify the food safety of the agricultural products in the wholesale market.

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