The Public Interest Litigation Procuratorial Department of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) convened a meeting on Sept 4 in Anshun city, Southwest China's Guizhou province, aiming to advance the initiative of safeguarding food and drug safety through public interest litigation. The focus was on addressing illegal food additives and ensuring the safety of edible agricultural products.
The meeting's participants emphasized the importance of enhancing the effectiveness of the special campaign through high-quality and efficient case handling and supervision, and called for concentrated efforts on tackling hard cases that have drawn strong public concern and exerted significant social impact. By precisely selecting supervision points around prominent issues, the role of litigation in demonstrating judicial value should be highlighted, they said.
It was noted at the meeting that in administrative public interest litigation, efforts should be made to improve the standardization and precision of procuratorial recommendations to ensure alignment with litigation requests. For cases in which procuratorial recommendations have not been promptly addressed, litigation should be resorted to safeguard public interests.
In civil public interest litigation, participants underscored the need for strict compliance with laws and regulations in investigation and evidence collection to ensure that the investigation procedures and evidence are lawful, and the litigation requests are precisely formulated, thereby achieving the dual goals of protecting public interests and strengthening deterrence and prevention.
They called for a problem-oriented approach to comprehensively enhance the quality and effectiveness of procuratorial supervision of public interest litigation in order to resolve food and drug safety issues effectively.
Lu Dan and Zhang Shunyong, deputies to the National People's Congress, along with several volunteer representatives from the "Yi Xin Wei Gong" ("Public-Minded Volunteers") service platform, were invited to attend the meeting and provided their insights and suggestions on relevant work.
Leading officials from public interest litigation departments of procuratorates in Beijing and nine other provincial-level regions, as well as relevant officials from the Anshun Municipal People's Procuratorate, shared their experiences and insights at the conference.
