Abstract: As a member of the European Union, Portugal is always a leader in food safety management. Portugal exerts strong government supervision over food safety, gives full play to the regulatory role of non-governmental bodies in the food safety chain, and ensures food safety in an all-round way through efficient industry associations, strict enterprise autonomy and diverse consumer supervision, thereby effectively improving the food safety level in the country. In this paper, the food safety governance mode of Portugal is introduced from three aspects: the government, industries and consumers. At the government level, the Economic and Food Safety Administration (ASAE) is the only competent department of food safety governance in Portugal, which has a clear division of labor with other government organizations and performs its duties, providing a solid institutional guarantee for food safety in Portugal. At the industry level, Portugal has established mature industry associations with diverse responsibilities to make up for the government’s deficiencies in food safety governance and Portuguese food enterprises have been able to ensure food safety in the whole production process through the hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) system. At the consumer side, the Portuguese Consumer Protection Association, a non-profit private-owned public welfare organization completely independent of the government, speaks for consumers and defends their rights. This provides a good paradigm for the transformation of food safety governance in China from traditional single government governance to social co-governance, which is of reference significance.

Key words: Portugal; food safety; integrated governance; initiatives