On the Construction of Food Safety Public Interest Litigation System in China

The food safety matters to the important interest of people's livelihood and to the construction of harmonious socialist society. If the public confidence in food safety and market order is lost, it is unbearable to contemplate how the consequence will affect the citizen's life health and the future development of country. Thus, this paper used the typical cases that emerged in the domain of food safety in recent years as a breakthrough point in order to explore how the victim population, who are in a weak position, may better secure their own legal interest and the social food safety public interest in the face of single relief pattern and insufficient judicial remedy. Specifically, this paper has proposed a tentative conception of the construction of food safety public interest litigation system in China, namely, with the Civil Procedural Law as a core and the laws, regulations and judicial interpretation related to public interest litigation as a basis, the subject of food safety public interest litigation and its range of application, legal case jurisdiction, burden of proof, litigation costs as well as the safeguard mechanism in line with them have been contemplated and a suggestion has been proposed in the hope that a certain contribution can be made to the theoretical and practical development of food safety public interest litigation in China.