Abstract: Measuring food safety index objectively, promoting the effective disclosure of food quality information, scientifically guiding consumer food purchasing behaviors and enterprise business activities and compelling local governments to toughen supervision over food safety are important measures to solve the problem of food safety by a market-led mechanism. In this article, we present a method for measuring food safety index on a five-graded scale based on the concept of the cask effect and the Golden Section, and we also quantitatively measure the situation of food safety in China based on the food inspection data in the third and fourth quarter of 2016 and in the first and second quarter of 2017 issued by the China Food and Drug Administration. It is shown that the values of food safety index for these four quarters are 279, 280, 264 and 290 within the safe range, suggesting that the situation of food safety is overall stable. We suggest that the government should step up efforts to strengthen areas of weakness with a focus on the supervision of the quality and safety of starch, starch-based products and vegetable products and particularly prevent the threat posed by food additives abuse to food quality and safety. Finally, we conclude with some suggestions on compiling and releasing food safety index.

Key words: food safety index, compilation theory, quantitative measurement