Abstract: China is now faced with serious problems in food safety, which is showed as follows: environmental pollution is severe in producing areas; food producing and processing level stays at a lower stage; there is still a long way to go in standard and technology of food safety compared with developed countries; illegal activities are widely and commonly seen with illegal measures taken in malicious, harmful and various ways; counterfeit and inferior food is greatly detrimental to the consumers’ health, causing a reduction of their confidence in food safety; and economic development is negatively impacted due to impeded export of food. The reasons of severe situation above lie in five aspects. First, current food safety legal system has not been constructed with the purpose of accomplishing food safety. Second, the legal system emphasizes "hard law" that is character- ized by punishment while neglects "soft law" characterized by program, policy and principle. Third, the public management of the central government of people has not fully functioned according to law and regulation. Fourth, the food safety supervision departments exercise their function in an intersected and conflicted way. Finally, the food safety standard is not accurately defined, nor the nature or grade of mandatory standard. To perfect the legal system of food safety in China, we should promulgate fundamental law of food safety, check up and improve current food safety supervision laws, and establish dynamic and harmonized mechanisms among separate supervising departments, and between different local governments as well as between central and local authorities.

Key words: food safety； legal system； ", hard law", ； ", soft law", ；