Abstract: When handling food safety cases that meet the applicable conditions for both administrative and civil public interest litigation, procuratorates possess significant discretion in procedural selection. This has led to practical concerns, such as the use of different handling paths for similar cases, undue compression of the scope of civil public interest litigation, and path dependency in criminal-related cases, which urgently require to be addressed through rulemaking and normative refinement. The choice of administrative or civil procedures should be based on the risk governance logic dominated by administrative supervision and the functional division between procuratorial and administrative powers, with the protection of public interest as the fundamental value orientation. Based on this, the principle of “administrative public interest litigation first, civil public interest litigation as a supplement” under the umbrella of public interest protection should be adopted. Procuratorates should follow a “two-step” judgment path when handling individual cases, namely, determining whether there is a scope for the concurrent application of administrative and civil public interest litigation, and then conducting a substantive judgment on “whether administrative public interest litigation effectively protects social public interests” by considering factors such as risk control efficacy, deterrence intensity, and damage remediation levels, thereby selecting the most suitable procedural plan for the individual case. In specific situations, if civil public interest litigation is more targeted in protecting public interest, the civil procedure should be initiated first. To ensure the effective implementation of procedural selection rules, the legislature should add provisions for procedural selection and coordination, thereby transforming the procedural selection from implicit judgment to demonstrable steps subject to supervision.

Key words: food safety; administrative public interest litigation; civil public interest litigation; procedural choice; public interest