國立臺灣大學政治科學論叢

Abstract / Chinese PDF Download

Many food safety incidents have occured in Taiwan lately.  The adulterated oil incidents in 2014 are unusual because the government handled the incidents poorly, and news related to these incidents lasted for more than three months. As a result, the public’s confidence in the government and in food safety dropped, and the government had to reform the food safety management system. Because food safety management involves various departments and requires cooperation between the central and local governments, this paper aims to provide a more complete picture of the causes of the events, and an analysis of governmental activities from the perspective of cross-boundary governance.

The results of this study show that the incidents erupted because the boundaries and responsibilities of the governments involved were not clear, maybe due to a lack of resources, and the deviating oil processors took advantage of these deficiencies. The governments conducted many activities to deal with these incidents.  However, the accumulation of past shortcomings and a lack of information circulating between different governmental units, led to the poor handling of the events. Therefore, this study suggests that the boundaries and responsibilities of the executive departments should be clarified, the circulation of information between various governmental units should be promoted, and cooperation between the executive and judicial departments should be strengthened in order to improve food safety management.