**2. Literature Review**

### *2.1. Concept of Food Security*

The precise concept of food security was first proposed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) at the World Food Conference in November 1974. The FAO believes that food security is a fundamental right of people that includes their subsistence rights. At this conference, the FAO defined food security as "guaranteeing that everyone can ge<sup>t</sup> what they need for survival and health everywhere."

In the 1980s, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations gave a new definition of food security in response to food shortages in developing countries: "The ultimate goal of food security is to ensure that all people can buy and a fford any food they need at any time." After the 1990s, with the improvement of the economy and the increase in material consumption, the quality and nutrition of food became the theme of food security. In 1991, the International Conference on Nutrition gave a new definition of food security: "Everyone can ge<sup>t</sup> safe and nutritious food at any time to maintain a healthy and active life" [10].

### *2.2. Crisis Response and Supervision System for Food Security*

Crises often occur in our daily lives. Especially in the modern era of rapid technological change, the impact of a crisis becomes more and more important. Fink described a crisis as a watershed, "turning point", or "deterioration" of an event, which is a key time point or opportunity for decision making. The time and situation during the occurrence of the incident are not stable, thus demanding immediate decisions [11]. Coombs suggested that no organization can be free from crisis [12], so when a crisis occurs, if policymakers can respond appropriately, implement corresponding prevention/mitigation measures for the crisis incident in stages, prepare for response, advanced recovery, and other managemen<sup>t</sup> behaviors, and cooperate with all relevant stakeholders with good communication channels, they can defuse the crisis and transform the organization from being in crisis to becoming a model for crisis managemen<sup>t</sup> [13]. Therefore, in the modern era of academic debate, how to respond to a crisis has become an important issue [14].

Among the numerous crises from the past to the present, food security incidents have emerged one after the other in recent years and have attracted grea<sup>t</sup> attention from society. With regard to food security, Yeung and Morris [15] found that the main influencing factor of consumer behavior was consumers' own perception of the food security crisis, rather than the risk of food security incidents. Therefore, previous literature has argued that the potential harms caused by food security incidents may be far less than the exaggerated crisis [16]. Smith [17] further pointed out that the public would first use their usual information channels to understand the situation in the face of the crisis. At the beginning of the event, they would be more sensitive to the information they first received and would more easily believe the information. Therefore, at the moment of the crisis, the first response is very important in influencing the public's perception.

With the improvement of the economy and the standard of living, the public attach more and more importance to food security issues. In a multirisk society, when facing a potential food security crisis, the public collects information about new crises mainly through the media. After receiving such information, people internalize their awareness of the crisis and its risks. With modern science and technology, the circulation of information becomes easier, and the public can have a deeper and more confident understanding of the crisis [18]. According to the analysis of a study conducted by Palenchar and Heath [18], in the face of a crisis, community residents can achieve self-protection through the relevant norms of crisis response and are willing to adopt other contingency measures to make them feel more in control of the crises. Jacob et al. [19] also found that uncertainty in crisis information increases people's fear and cognitive bias. It is important to inform consumers about the risks so that they can choose the right strategy that reflects their demand for information, their morals, and their values [20].

From those studies, the public must deal with an abundance of information in order to manage their own risk profile connected to nourishment and possibly place trust in various expert systems delivering the information in order to overcome anxiety in approaching food-related crises [21,22]. Since di fferent groups of actors—governments or institutions on the one hand and private commercial enterprises on the other—influence decision making about food, often conflicting with each other and enhancing the anxiety in food choices [23], the public's fear or aversion about food security could be contained through both information provided by expert systems and adequate communication to trigger positive emotional responses [24].

Moreover, most public opinion concerns derive from problems with food safety and governmen<sup>t</sup> supervision, coupled with a slow or lacking action by the government, resulting in aggravated negative public sentiment and a decrease in the credibility of the government. Therefore, the governmen<sup>t</sup> must start from the source, from research experiments to market entry, and further improve the system at each level to strengthen approval and supervision. For these reasons, it is important to be open and transparent in policy formulation and to give people an opportunity to express their demands while using the media and other forces to increase information disclosure, actively address popular science rumors, guide the public in rational discussions, e ffectively protect the public's rights, and enhance the credibility of the governmen<sup>t</sup> [25].

Accordingly, because of the increase in the risk to food security, the governments of various countries should rethink their current response programs to establish suitable food security managemen<sup>t</sup> systems and adequate communication features. Under such a situation, priority should be given to establishing adequate norms for the crisis response to lead the execution of the related orders, as well as implementing supervision systems to reduce damage during the crisis [26]. Based on the studies, suitable norms for the crisis response can improve the public's sense of control over a crisis of food security, and a better supervision system, specific rules, social supervision, and responsibility investigation will also be helpful to prevent as well as mitigate crises in food security.

### **3. Methods: Comparative Analysis Approach and Qualitative Research Method**

Comparative political and social research is generally defined in two ways: Either on the basis of its supposed core subject, which is almost always defined at the level of political and social systems [27], or by means of descriptive features that claim to enhance knowledge about politics and society as a process [28]. These descriptions are generally considered to di fferentiate the comparative approach from other approaches within political and social sciences.

Since the food security crises depicted in this study were the first major emergencies to occur in Mainland China and Taiwan after the enforcement of food security systems comprehensively adopted at that time, by adopting a comparative analysis approach, the observation of the crisis responses in these two regions could show the descriptive features of two systems so as to enhance knowledge regarding food security policies, the food security situation, and supervision issues.

Additionally, based on qualitative research, this study performs a holistic exploration of social phenomena using various data collection methods in the natural environment. The practical induction method was used to analyze data and formation theory. This is an activity to gain an explanatory understanding of the behavior and meaning construction of the research object through interaction with the research object [29]. Hence, this study also chose a qualitative research method for exploration and collected data in the period of 2008–2019, both in Mainland China and Taiwan, so as to avoid any subjective judgment and to make more objective judgments and a comparative study.

This paper takes the legal norms of food security in Mainland China and Taiwan as the research scope and identifies the blind spots of the legal system and supervision through comparative analysis using o fficial documents and research papers regarding the two regions. It also puts forward suggestions with the expectation that Mainland China and Taiwan will learn from each other and make improvements in their responses to food security crises.

### **4. Food Security Situation and Supervision Issues in Mainland China**

### *4.1. Situation of Food Security in Mainland China*

In recent years, many major food security incidents have occurred frequently in Mainland China, as shown in Table 1. For this reason, food security has attracted more attention from all domains than ever before, resulting in a crisis of public confidence in food security [4].


### **Table 1.** Situation of food security in Mainland China.

### *4.2. Issues for Food Security Supervision in Mainland China*

Mainland China currently implements a multisectoral and phased supervision system [30]. In detail, before the reform, the highest coordinating body for food security in Mainland China was the Commission on Food Security of the State Council, which served as a high-level deliberative and coordinating body for food security work under the State Council. It comprised the Commission Office on Food Security of the State Council (referred to as the Food Security Office of the State Council) as the body handling daily affairs of the Commission. According to the institutional reform and functional transformation plan of the State Council approved in March 2013, the relevant organizations and affiliations will be adjusted and merged into the National Health and Family Planning Commission and the State Food and Drug Administration.

Continuing the above, the food security supervision system in Mainland China can be visualized as in Figure 1. This supervision system seems to be comprehensive, but its biggest drawback is that it is prone to unclear powers and responsibilities, overlapping functions, inefficiency, and shirking of responsibilities by the food supervision departments. Moreover, more than 10 supervision departments, including agriculture, industry and commerce, quality inspection, health, and food and medicine, are involved in various links closely related to production, processing, circulation, and consumption. If a certain link is broken and the connection is not good, the whole food supervision system will have problems [31,32].

**Figure 1.** Food security supervision system in Mainland China.

Apart from the power and responsibility problems, in the actual operation process, the supervision system also has the problem of inadequate supervision [33,34]. Consumers often abandon attempts at solving food security problems through judicial procedures because of the high cost of safeguarding rights, which leads to the failure of mass supervision. Media supervision and consumer association supervision mainly rely on the reports of those whose rights and interests have been damaged, but because of consumers' apprehension, the effect of supervision will be greatly weakened. Enterprise self-supervision and industry supervision mainly depend on the morality and conscience of the enterprise itself, and once in conflict with economic interests, food manufacturers are likely to choose to pursue maximum benefits and market share. These two kinds of supervision are also difficult to achieve.

As in administrative supervision, information about the food supply chain is not open and transparent, so consumers can only passively believe the information issued by third-party governmen<sup>t</sup> departments when they want to buy products manufactured by enterprises. Not only are they unable to respond to the government's supervision, but they also have little information exchange with food enterprises. For certain reasons, the governmen<sup>t</sup> may not provide all of the real information to consumers [35]. This kind of one-way governmen<sup>t</sup> trust very easily causes crises. Although governmen<sup>t</sup> departments will invest much money in monitoring food security risks, as long as food security incidents occur, "government supervision is not in place" must be one of the reasons for the occurrence of food security incidents [36,37].

At the technical level, the food security standards in Mainland China are lagging behind, and the means of inspection and detection are relatively undeveloped. Therefore, it is difficult to guarantee the scientific rigor and authority of the test results [38]. Current food security supervision urgently needs to solve the technical problems such as the immature means of the evaluation and detection of food security risks [39].

### **5. Food Security Situation and Supervision Issues in Taiwan**

### *5.1. Situation of Food Security in Taiwan*

Taiwan attaches grea<sup>t</sup> importance to food security. It not only formulates relatively complete laws and regulations, but also has a complete process supervision and guarantee system from farm to dining table, as shown in Table 2. In 2011, Taiwan responded decisively and quickly to the plasticizer incident, which took only three months to subside. However, in 2013, a series of food security incidents

broke out, such as "organic rice mixing with low-price imported rice", "poisonous starch", "tainted oil", and "poisonous milk", which also shook the Taiwanese people's confidence in their food security.


**Table 2.** Situation of food security in Taiwan.

### *5.2. Issues for Food Security Supervision in Taiwan*

Compared with that of Mainland China, Taiwan's food security supervision is mainly the responsibility of three governmen<sup>t</sup> departments: Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Executive Yuan, and Bureau of Standards, Metrology, and Inspection, Ministry of Economic Affairs. Among them, the Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan is mainly responsible for the supervision of the production of raw food materials, including raw material managemen<sup>t</sup> for agricultural products, animal husbandry, and aquatic products, and assisting in the work of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Executive Yuan. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, Executive Yuan and its subordinate health agencies are responsible for the supervision of food market circulation under the leadership of Executive Yuan. The Bureau of Standards, Metrology, and Inspection, Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) is responsible for entry and exit food inspection and entrusted inspection. Only food inspected up to the standard can be circulated in the market [40]. Finally, food security and quality certification based on the Food Security and Health Management Law is the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) Smile Mark promoted by the Industrial Development Bureau, MOEA, and the Certified Agricultural Standards (CAS) Mark of the Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan [41]. Taiwan's food security supervision system is shown in Figure 2.

**Figure 2.** Taiwanese food security supervision departments and their duties.

### **6. Comparison of Food Security Status and Supervision Issues in Mainland China and Taiwan**

From the food security supervision system in Mainland China and Taiwan, we can deduce the food security responses relative to the system, as shown in Table 3. The legal construction on food security issues in Mainland China has not only such problems as a lack of system, integrity, and deterrence in supervision laws and regulations, duplicated multidepartment enforcement, repeated enforcement, conflict of laws and regulations, a discrepancy of technical standards, and imperfect enforcement measures [42], but also supervision blind spots, such as imperfect legislation, content lags, discoordination between laws, the insufficient force of legal penalties, and even the weak legal awareness of the general public.


**Table 3.** Comparisons of food security issues in Mainland China and Taiwan.

Compared with that of Mainland China, Taiwan's food security managemen<sup>t</sup> is under the jurisdiction of the "Ministry of Health and Welfare, Executive Yuan" and the "Industrial Development Bureau, MOEA". Relevant laws and regulations are also incorporated in the food hygiene managemen<sup>t</sup> law, food hygiene standards, and regulations to promote industrial upgrading. This model has its own unique features, but it also has many unsatisfactory defects. The more noticeable ones are: (1) Political mafias are often involved in food security incidents, and some public opinion representatives arbitrarily carry out "lobbying" in judicial cases. There is a suspicion of collusion between o fficials and businessmen, resulting in di fficult judgment in major cases and obstacles for law enforcement and inspection, which makes food practitioners act with impunity. (2) Taiwan's criminal law has a weak e ffect in the punishment of food security felonies to achieve its proper purpose. (3) Taiwan's administrative punishment is too light, which may lead to disguised incentives for economic crime and social network and social media rumors.

Comprehensive research and analysis has shown that the fundamental reason for the frequent occurrence of food security accidents in China lies in the more humanistic supervision mode, under which most departmental managers often act on their own will, regardless of the regulations. To change this dependence on the bad paths of free-riding, weak governmen<sup>t</sup> rules, abuse of power, and buck-passing, we must change the supervision mode of food security from the rule-of-man mode of supervision to supervision based on rules and regulations [43]. The inherent reason for the frequent occurrence of food security accidents lies in the unequal interests among all levels of the regulatory bodies and food enterprises caused by information asymmetry. Based on incentive compatibility theory, improving food security supervision in China should start with clarifying the responsibility of food security supervision at all levels and increasing the punishment of enterprises violating regulations [44]. In contrast, Taiwan should promote the basic law on food security, starting from reviewing and revising its existing cumbersome and decentralized food security regulations [45]. The primary task is to strengthen the promotion of third-party inspection, the "production resumé" system, food security knowledge advocacy, moral education, information provision, etc. [20].
