Food safety, sampling inspection and optimization of regulatory resource allocation: Evidence from China’s aquatic food inspection

Food safety is a widespread problem that challenge regulatory bodies and consumers around the world. Earlier studies emphasized resources as the key to improving regulatory effectiveness, but our study suggests this common sense should be reexamined, especially in the context of increasing regulatory burdens in food safety. Using China’s aquatic food safety sampling inspection data with over 300,000 samples from 2014 to 2022, we examine the effects of sampling inspection on the failure rate of aquatic foods, and try to identify supply chain segments where more regulatory resources should be allocated. The results show that increasing the number of sampling inspections significantly reduces both the failure rate in aquatic foods, but the effects of increased sampling inspection on improving aquatic food quality follows an inverted U-shaped pattern. Increasing the intensity of sampling inspections targeting the upstream segment in the supply chain can significantly reduce the failure rate of aquatic foods in the downstream segments. Moreover, increasing the frequency of sampling inspections is more effective in reducing the failure rate in high-risk segments of the aquatic food supply chain, such as restaurants, online stores, wet markets, wholesale markets, and fresh food retailers. Our study highlights the crucial impact of regulatory bodies sampling inspection on reducing the failure rate of aquatic foods, and in particular provides policy implications for optimizing the allocation of regulatory resources in different supply chain segments.