| Summary: | 碩士 === 東吳大學 === 法律學系 === 104 === While dealing with the issues of food safety under our criminal justice system, actus reus contains dangerous crime in both the Criminal Code and affiliated criminal laws of the Act Governing Food (Safety) and Sanitation (“the Act”). In theory, dangerous crime shall be an exception since it simplifies liability of crime to achieve the purpose of protecting legal interests in an early stage. However, since late 20th century, abstract dangerous crime increases rapidly and heavily in the area of affiliated criminal laws of environmental law, economical law, etc. To the legislation tendency above including early-stage and severe criminal liability, scholars call “Risk Criminal Law” to describe the phenomenon of modern criminal law, high abstraction of protected legal interests, as well as symbolization of criminal law. Meanwhile, this trend reflects on legal amendments of affiliated criminal laws of the Act since the plasticizer crisis broke out.
The plasticizer crisis in 2011 became one of the most significant events in food safety history in Taiwan, it not only recalled awareness of food safety, but also impelled a series of legal amendments. However, legislators imputed the crisis to light penalty and liability and never try to review and the whole Act. This treatment although can calm public uneasy mood, such actions are palliatives. Predictably, while ability of illegal discovery of the authority does not catch up, a part of the owners of the food industries would rather take their chance in order to cost down and earn profit.
As expected, after the poisoned starch crisis breaking out in May 2013, legislators realized the importance of precaution against food safety issues. Nonetheless, they never give up aggravating penalty and liability as their main sanction. Meanwhile, the Act attributed specific behavior such as “manufacturing or selling food that have been adulterated or counterfeited” or “containing food additives that are not approved by the central competent authority” to abstract dangerous crime which implements legislators’ intent on early-stage penalty and liability for the deterrence purpose. After that, the following sentences of fake oil events involving Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory Co. and Flavor Full Co. applied the regulation above. However, whether the scope of applying the act should stick to food safety itself or expand to food fraud brings about entirely different outcomes.
So far, affiliated criminal laws of the Act, in addition to including abstract dangerous crime, not only add a new element of crime: “may be sufficient to harmful to human health” but retain the element: “are committed to the detriment of human health” at the same time, legislators seem to consider that danger exists different levels along with time sequence. Therefore, this thesis attempts to probe into research the Act on the basis of the concept of “danger” as well as the types of dangerous crime and reflect on the fact of the excessive expansion of the Act.
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