Abstract
In the last decade, vegetable safety issues have received growing attention from both consumers and public authorities in China, as vegetable safety hazards pose a serious threat to public health. In 2017, the Industry & Trade Bureau in China implemented a “Market Renovation Program”. This program includes the renovation of wholesale and wet markets, the formal registration of all stallholders in these markets and the introduction of a rapid test for pesticides residues. We apply the co-regulation framework to assess the implementation and results of the renovation program on the safety of vegetables. A mixed methods approach is used to investigate the effects of the renovation program. The qualitative study elaborates on the implementation of the renovation program and the behavioural changes of stakeholders in handling vegetables through interviews and field observations. The quantitative results confirm that the renovation program has a positive impact on vegetable safety. In conclusion, this study shows that the key factor for the success of the renovation program is the transition of authority from the local, public authority to the market management.
Highlights
In the last decades, consumer demand for food safety has increased dramatically in China due to urbanization and a rising middle class
Because of the limits of using secondary data, we use the Chinese Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) reports merely to complement the qualitative study. It is beyond the scope of this paper to conduct an empirical investigation that directly tests the causality between the renovation program and food safety
By following the standard issued by the Industry and Trade Bureau (ITB), market management set up a food safety hazards rapid test room and tests goods that enter the market
Summary
Consumer demand for food safety has increased dramatically in China due to urbanization and a rising middle class. The renovation program emphasizes the need for “collaboration between public and private” and “co-regulation with stakeholders” Such a framework of public-private coregulation proposes that the responsibility of food safety control should be shared among the actors in the supply chain and that safety hazards can be prevented by measures such as market incentives, education and training [24]. The European Food Safety Authority has created a farm-to-fork regulatory framework and a science-based risk assessment process by collaborating with member states as well as with private stakeholders in the supply chain [19]. This study intends to shed more light on how the renovation policy has affected different stakeholders in the market, an issue that has been absent in most research To date, it remains unknown whether the renovation program improved vegetable safety in wholesale and wet markets.
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