Food Safety Risk Management: From the Perspective of Co-regulation

In the past years, the food law of Taiwan allowed the competent authority to command the food businesses in certain behaviors. As a regulated role, the food businesses were asked to meet the requirements of the competent authority. However, instead of reducing the food safety risks, these kinds of regulatory measures only highlighted the defect of the statutory regulation. In other words, statutory regulation couldn’t deal with uncertainties food safety risks. Food safety incidents occurred in succession, which promoted the government into action. According to the Constitution and the protective obligation, the government should take actively action in both the control point in time and control method to prevent food safety risks in order to maintain the public health, protect people''s right to know and the right to health. First, the control point in time could be moved up by using the precautionary principle, by doing so, it will make Taiwan’s food safety control system being able to aware of risk precaution instead of remaining in the idea of preventing danger only. Second, change the traditional way of statutory regulation and emphasize the importance of self-regulation in the food manufacturing industry. In my opinion, the self-regulation in the food manufacturing industry is a part of co-regulation by both government and food industries. This paper explores the possibilities to reconstruct the ideal model of co-regulation by referring to the U.S. law and EU law of HACCP-based systems and food traceability. The reconstructed model will be used to examine the biases and disadvantages in the food law, and the suggestions were proposed based on the research conclusion.