Toward a Safer Future: Adaptive Leadership Portfolio on Food Safety Management in China

Policy Problem Statement:
Food safety incidents in China during the past decade have profoundly wounded the trust of the public society in the domestic food industry and compromised China’s reputation among the international society. Directly related with the life quality of people and with social stability, food safety control remains the most urgent challenge the Central Government needs to address. While multiple efforts including the enactment of an updated Food Safety Law in 2009 and the establishment of the Commission on Food Safety of the State Council in 2010 have been taken, the existing food safety regulation system has failed to prevent more incidents from happening. Beyond the immoral conduct of specific individuals or companies, the ineffectiveness of current regulations is rooted in the food safety regulation system’s reactive, qualification-focused nature, and in its internal structure that has resulted in poor coordination among different regulatory institutions. On the technical side, when managing food safety crises, the government has been “reactive” to public panic after exposure of incidents and lacked systematic planning. During regular inspection, the current effort has been overly focused on whether food producers or processors are qualified to enter the market but has paid little attention to whether they are constantly producing high quality food that reaches national standards. As for the organizational structure, the current regulatory system is consists of a series of regulatory institutions with overlapping or unclarified responsibilities, which has resulted in not only vacuum spaces of inspection that tolerate the unprofessional conduct of food producers, but also in inevitable inefficiency when the system manages food safety crises. A more proactive, process-oriented system with clarified responsibilities for each institution is thus called for.