Abstract: In view of the frequent occurrence of problems in the field of health food safety in China, the author analyzes the necessity of collaborative management of health food safety, and points out that there exist problems in China’s coordinative management mechanism for health foods, including the facts that the measures for supervision over and law enforcement on health food industries need to be improved, and the education and protection mechanism for health food consumers are imperfect. Moreover, the author puts forward some suggestions to improve these problems. First, the mechanism of supervision over non-compliance activities, such as false claims and pyramid scheme in the field of health food marketing should be improved by establishing a comprehensive compliance supervision system for health food enterprises, and introducing an administrative settlement system into the collaborative governance mechanism of health food safety. Second, a sound education and protection mechanism for health food consumers should be established. More specifically, firstly, the major supervision departments should take solid action in the work of consumer education through their official media channels; secondly, the proceeds from an administrative settlement should be wholly or partially used to compensate injured consumers and people who expose non-compliance activities of health food enterprises; thirdly, the class action system should be introduced into the field of health food safety civil procedure to form a health food safety collaborative governance mechanism in which all parties actively participate.

Key words: health food safety; collaborative management; compliance regulation; administrative settlement; class action