食品安全的公共价值失灵及其监管改革研究

Public Value Failure Theory and Food Safety Regulation Reform

频发的食品安全问题成为我国推动高质量发展的较大阻碍,如何有效监管?目前主流的市场监管理论,均难以系统解释并应对我国食品安全中存在的诸多乱象与理论难题。文章引入公共价值失灵理论框架指导研究,采用内容分析法,对40个食品安全事件进行编码验证,展示了这一新理论框架对食品监管的适用性。新理论很好地揭示了我国食品安全领域存在的多主体、多环节、多层级的公共价值失灵现象,其基本表现与原因包括:制度不健全、信息沟通不畅,价值表述和集合机制失灵;监管部门查处不严、推诿扯皮,履职尽责失灵;企业“利益囤积”、“主体责任”失灵;“劣币驱逐良币”、优质的公共价值供给者失灵;公共资源污染、源头治理失灵;多主体谋求“短期利益”、长远公共价值失灵;挑战人性尊严、社会伦理失灵等。在监管改革的过程中,要克服传统监管理论重工具、轻目标的“监管悖论”,从维护公共价值与防患公共价值失灵入手,开启一条新型食品安全监管的理论与实践路径。

Frequent food safety incidents reflect that there remains a long way to go for the high quality development and regulation to take place in China.The question of how to carry out the regulation effectively is often asked.At present,the mainstream theories of market regulation in the academic circle can hardly explain fully the major symptoms and the theoretical problems in the field of food safety.This study utilizes the public value failure theory to guide an analysis of over forty typical food safety violation cases.The findings show that the seven measures of public value failure in the analytical framework of the theory,such as‘failing to mechanisms for articulating and aggregating values,imperfect monopolies,benefit hoarding,scarcity of quality public value providers,short time horizon,substitutability versus conservation of resources,and threats to substance and human dignity’,can all find their respective symptoms manifested in the food regulatory market of this country.A more serious and systematic study on the relevance of public value failure prevention theory can greatly enhance the understanding of the food regulation problems in China,assist to overcome the regulatory dilemma implied in the traditional regulation theory,and provide new principles to help resolve the long standing puzzle of regulatory failure found in the field of food safety in the country.