The Challenges of Consulting the Public on Science Policy: Examining the Development of European Risk Assessment Policy for Genetically Modified Animals

With the growing importance of public engagement in science policy making and declining levels of public trust in food production, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has attempted to embed “good governance” approaches to strengthen scientific independence and open up risk decision making, which include the use of public consultations. However, “opening up” of risk assessment policies reveals some tensions; namely, balancing the goals of scientific excellence and transparency, protecting science from interests, addressing value judgments, and limited opportunities to debate ethical and social issues. EFSA's development of risk assessment policy for genetically modified animals is used as a case study to analyze these tensions. This analysis suggests that in order to fulfill good governance commitments and maintain trust in risk governance, closer cooperation between EFSA and the European Commission is required to provide “space” for debating the broader risk management issues. This publically accessible space may be needed alongside rather than instead of EFSA's consultation.     

‘When we have nothing we all eat grass’: debt,donor dependence and the food crisis in Malawi, 2001 to 2003

In 2002, Malawi faced a devastating food crisis, an event in which hundreds of people died of hunger, while over a thousand succumbed to a country-wide cholera epidemic. By June of that year, over 3.2 million people needed emergency food aid, one-third of Malawi's population. This article assesses the crisis through the lens of donor–government relations. Beginning with the restructuring of the agricultural sector under a World Bank-sponsored structural adjustment programme, a process that discouraged food production by small-holder farmers, the article explains how the Malawian government's reliance on external sources of funding, and its deteriorating relations with key international creditors, rendered it impotent in the face of the oncoming crisis. Having sold its strategic grain reserve (SGR) to service mounting debts, the government could not rein in a food price spiral that peaked in March 2002. Allegations of financial irregularities surrounding the sale of the SGR served to make matters worse. The United States, Britain, Denmark and the European Union cancelled direct development funding and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank suspended Malawi from the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative. With limited access to credit, the Government of Malawi could neither re-stock its food reserves nor fund emergency imports in time to mitigate the worst effects of the crisis. Relief aid was further delayed by disagreements between the government and key donors and aid agencies regarding genetically modified (GM) food. While accepting Amartya Sen's basic entitlements framework – the 2002 crisis was one of pricing and access rather than absolute shortages of food – the article posits the following theoretical argument: in the context of highly indebted poor countries, it is a government's relationship with its principal donors and creditors that determines the outcome of food crises by shaping the policy responses available both leading up to and during the event.     

论政府监管权规范运行的制度完善--以食品安全监管为例

市场经济的发展和食品安全的严峻形势迫切需要政府对食品安全领域实施有效监管。政府监管权力的独立性并不能完全保证监管行为的公正性,特别是监管者的有限理性和市场经济行为的复杂性决定了监管权力有很大的自由裁量空间。在肯定政府监管有助于抑制市场失灵的同时,为防止权力的扩张、滥用。维护社会公众利益。必须在信息公开、行政程序、行政问责、激励监管等方面进行制度完善,以保证食品安全领域政府监管权力的规范运行。     

刑法中的“食品”概念辨析

我国食品安全法中的食品定义尚不完善。刑法中的"食品"概念亦应当按照食品安全法的规定进行理解,并根据立法目的对其进行扩大解释。因此,食用农产品、食品添加剂、保健食品都属于刑事法律中的食品范围,但保健食品并不等于"既是食品又是药品的物品"。关于"毒胶囊"引发的刑法定性问题则应当依照具体情况区别对待。     

食品安全违法犯罪举报奖励制度研究

自2011年7月国务院要求各地建立食品安全有奖举报制度以来,此制度在严厉打击食品安全违法犯罪方面所发挥的作用日益显现.但实践表明,此制度仍存在一些突出问题亟待加以解决,因此,建立完善的举报奖励制度尤显必要.     

Feeding finance: a critical account of the shifting relationships between finance,food and farming

Abstract

Whether in the form of commodity index funds, farmland investment funds or commodities trading by agri-food companies, there is evidence of an increasingly close relationship between finance, food and agriculture. While these developments have received some critical attention of late, existing accounts of the ‘financialization of food’ are limited to the extent that they view finance as an external force with emphasis placed on the unnaturalness of its relationship with agriculture and its distortive effects on agricultural markets. Recognizing that finance and agriculture have a long history, this paper offers a more nuanced account of the place of financialization in the agricultural sector. Specifically, it examines how agriculture's emergence as an investment opportunity has reconfigured the terrain of agricultural interests and logics while creating new knowledge demands and agricultural visibilities. These dynamics are explored through a case study of the role of finance and processes of financialization in the recent demise of the Canadian Wheat Board as a state marketing agency. Through this discussion, the paper offers valuable insights into not only the reworking of agriculture as a particular type of financial space, but also the nature and limits of financialization itself as a way of engaging with the world beyond urban financial centres.     

Is long-term food insecurity inevitable in Asia?

Abstract

This article questions two widely accepted claims on long-term food insecurity in Asia, the world's (heterogeneous) region with the largest number of undernourished individuals. The first claim is that food production may not grow as fast as the pace of population growth in Asia, which will reach 5 billion by 2050. The second claim is that an unstoppable emergence of a middle class in Asia will dramatically change the composition of food demand. On the first claim, the region's contribution to high and volatile international food prices is well known, but Asia's potentially positive contributions toward future price uncertainty and productivity growth are much less cited. On the second claim, the changing composition of future food demand in the region will depend on the extent that poverty reduction effectively leads to middle class expansion, which it is not an automatic process, and its extent still remains to be seen. Past evidence teaches us that poverty reduction on its own will not do the job of eradicating hunger, nor will only increasing food production. The jury is still out, but doomsday predictions are not necessarily justified.     

Going out: China's food security from Southeast Asia

Abstract

China's new five-year plan recognised the looming insecurity in its agricultural sector. On the one hand, the country faces a diminishing arable land supply; on the other, a large population with rapidly increasing diets. Although large-scale trade and investment in this sector has been developing since the mid 1990s between China and a variety of African states, it is a relatively new addition to the more established China-Southeast Asian economic relationship. This article seeks to explore the impact that China's agricultural investments are having on two Southeast Asian countries – Indonesia and the Philippines – where there has been a marked increase in activities by Chinese firms in agricultural produce. The findings from these two case studies – and a series of smaller studies of the situation in other regional states – are used as a benchmark to clarify some of the consequences of China's agricultural investment from Southeast Asia for regional food security.     

生产、销售不符合安全标准的食品罪的司法适用新论——以两高最新司法解释为视角

2013年5月2日,最高人民法院、最高人民检察院颁布的关于食品安全的司法解释对生产、销售不符合安全标准的食品罪进行了详细的规定,明确了本罪的入罪门槛,以仅设置下限不设置上限的罚金刑方式回应本罪谋利性本质,并且将本罪客观行为从“生产、销售”扩大至“加工、销售、运输、贮存”等环节,可谓以“横向到边、纵向到底”的方式全面规制生产、销售不符合安全标准的食品犯罪行为.然而,其仍未解决食品监管渎职罪规定笼统、入罪门槛模糊以及本罪共犯范围过宽的问题,并未做到宽严相济、宽严有度,实现对本罪的合理规制.     

我国食品安全犯罪刑事政策研究

我国《刑法修正案(八)》对食品安全领域的犯罪分别从严密法网和严厉处罚两方面进行了一定调整,但在实际的刑事司法、刑事执法过程中,由于难以操作、缺乏协调等原因,大大降低了食品安全犯罪人被惩罚的概率。针对食品安全领域的犯罪,应坚持贯彻"宽严相济,以严为主"的刑事政策,并适当地引入严格刑事责任理念。