A new Office of Food Safety will be established within the Executive Yuan as the dedicated unit for coordinating food safety management efforts among government agencies, Executive Yuan Spokesperson Sun Lih-chyun said today.
The Executive Yuan has amended its regulations governing departmental affairs to include a new article about the establishment of the food safety office, Sun said. After all regulatory procedures are completed, the office will begin operations next week.
At a recent high-level meeting on food safety attended by the Executive Yuan and the National Security Council, President Ma Ying-jeou said food safety management efforts should be promoted to higher levels of government. The Executive Yuan hence expanded its food safety promotion task force into the Office of Food Safety to implement and coordinate inter-ministerial efforts.
Sun said the legal basis for setting up the office comes from the Organizational Act of the Executive Yuan and the Basic Code Governing Central Administrative Agencies Organizations. The former allows the Yuan to establish dedicated units to handle specific matters, while the latter stipulates that for an agency whose organization is governed by laws, the division of duties within its internal units shall be stipulated by its regulations governing departmental affairs.
The above Basic Code also states that the Executive Yuan's organization may not be governed by any laws other than the Basic Code and the organic laws and regulations of the Executive Yuan. Therefore, the Organizational Act of the Executive Yuan should be the appropriate law for setting up the food safety office, rather than the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation, Sun explained.
Using an operating model similar to that of disaster response agencies, the Office of Food Safety will serve as an inter-ministerial platform for managing food safety. The office will be divided into groups, and will comprise personnel with food safety management expertise from the Executive Yuan, government agencies and related foundations.