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Environmental pollution is one of the major sustainability problems in China. As a major institutional innovation to supervise local governments to implement environmental governance measures, the effect of central environmental protection inspection needs to be carefully investigated. In this paper, the environmental protection inspection in July 2016 was used as a quasi-natural experiment to estimate the effect of central environmental protection inspection on air quality by using the synthetic control method. The study found that not all regions under inspection have significantly reduced the Air Quality Index (AQI). For the four inspected regions, the AQI decreased in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Jiangsu Province during the period of inspection. But the inspection does not affect Henan Province and Jiangxi Province. In terms of individual pollutants, for Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Jiangsu Province where AQI has declined, not all individual pollutant concentrations have decreased. The treatment of specific individual pollutants still needs to be concerned.

This study aims to establish an enhanced ship inspection system to support the commercialization of eco-friendly and digital technologies in advanced ships. The research focuses on analyzing the normative effects and institutional applications of Article 73 of the current Ship Safety Act, comparing it with related laws and systems in major countries. The objective is to identify inefficiencies in the current inspection system and propose improvements for greater efficiency. Additionally, this study seeks to optimize the use of classification rules while minimizing overlap with government inspections. Through this research, we aim to ensure the safety of advanced ships and enhance the competitiveness of the maritime industry. The proposed improvements are designed to align with international maritime safety standards and regulations. The findings are expected to contribute to the development of a more effective ship inspection system, facilitating the seamless introduction of advanced technologies in the maritime sector.

Background Globally, unhealthy diet is one of the leading global risks to health, thus it is central to consider aspects of the food environment that are modifiable and may enable healthy eating. Food retail data can be used to present and facilitate analyses of food environments that in turn may direct strategies towards improving dietary patterns among populations. Though food retail data are available in many countries, their completeness and accuracy differ. Methods We applied a systematically name-based procedure combined with a manual procedure on Danish administrative food retailer data (i.e. the Smiley register) to identify, locate and classify food outlets. Food outlets were classified into the most commonly used classifications (i.e. fast food, restaurants, convenience stores, supermarkets, fruit and vegetable stores and miscellaneous) each divided into three commonly used definitions; narrow, moderate and broad. Classifications were based on branch code, name, and/or information on the internal and external appearance of the food outlet. From ground-truthing we validated the information in the register for its sensitivity and positive predictive value. Results In 361 randomly selected areas of the Capital region of Denmark we identified a total of 1887 food outlets compared with 1861 identified in the register. We obtained a sensitivity of 0.75 and a positive predictive value of 0.76. Across classifications, the positive predictive values varied with highest values for the moderate and broad definitions of fast food, convenience stores and supermarkets (ranging from 0.89 to 0.97). Conclusion Information from the Smiley Register is considered to be representative to the Danish food environment and may be used for future research.

How safe is our food supply? Each year the media report what appears to be growing concern related to illness caused by the food consumed by Americans. These food borne illnesses are caused by pathogenic microorganisms, pesticide residues, and food additives. Recent actions taken at the federal, state, and local levels in response to the increase in reported incidences of food borne illnesses point to the need to evaluate the food safety system in the United States. This book assesses the effectiveness of the current food safety system and provides recommendations on changes needed to ensure an effective science-based food safety system. Ensuring Safe Food discusses such important issues as: What are the primary hazards associated with the food supply? What gaps exist in the current system for ensuring a safe food supply? What effects do trends in food consumption have on food safety? What is the impact of food preparation and handling practices in the home, in food services, or in production operations on the risk of food borne illnesses? What organizational changes in responsibility or oversight could be made to increase the effectiveness of the food safety system in the United States? Current concerns associated with microbiological, chemical, and physical hazards in the food supply are discussed. The book also considers how changes in technology and food processing might introduce new risks. Recommendations are made on steps for developing a coordinated, unified system for food safety. The book also highlights areas that need additional study. Ensuring Safe Food will be important for policymakers, food trade professionals, food producers, food processors, food researchers, public health professionals, and consumers.

In total, 44.3% of particle matter 10 (PM10) is fugitive dust, and one of the main sources of fugitive dust generation in Korea is construction work (22%). Construction sites account for 84% of the total business places that have reported fugitive dust generation. Currently, the concentration of fine dust at construction sites is being remotely monitored by government inspection agencies through IoT sensors, but it is difficult to trust that appropriate fine dust reduction measures are being taken, because contractors can avoid taking these measures by submitting false reports or photos. In addition, since the fine dust monitoring system under government management is not an open platform and centralized system, residents near construction sites encounter difficulties in accessing information about fine dust. Therefore, in this study, we designed and constructed a blockchain network model to transparently and reliably provide network participants with the information associated with IoT data and fine dust reduction measures. To operate the blockchain network, we designed the chaincode, DApp, and network architecture. In addition, information on fine dust concentration and reduction measure photos were shared with the participants via the blockchain search tool (Hyperledger Explorer). The proposed blockchain network is expected to form a trust protocol among contractors, government inspection agencies, and citizens.

From milk to meat, fertilizer to fruits, inspections of food and other agricultural commodities became a widely accepted—and important—function of governments well before the twentieth century. 1 Even in the infamous “America First” budget of 2017, which proposed billions in cuts across a swath of nonmilitary government programs, the Trump administration proposed a “fully funded” Food Safety and Inspection Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Bolstered by scientific studies and government-contracted reports, they argued for a new approach to food safety based on the principles of the emerging field of risk analysis. 9 They proposed that the agency should turn over some responsibility for end product inspection to the regulated industry and pay much more attention to scientific testing for pathogens and verification of preventive measures. By the 1980s, what might have begun as a healthy skepticism about the size and shape of the bureaucracy morphed into an attack on its very foundations. 12 Poultry inspection laws and regulations underscore an unusual division of labor in American food regulation: the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspects meat and poultry products using continuous, in-plant inspection of each and every carcass. Especially in the last few decades, government officials, interest groups, and the general public have been engaged in a fierce debate over whether this divided system works for American producers, consumers, and particularly for workers. 13 Regulators, legal scholars, industry representatives, and scientists often describe visual inspection as “archaic” and “outdated” because inspectors spend more time on visual defects as compared to the detection of microbial or chemical contamination. 14 By contrast, most federal inspectors and a few consumer advocates characterize continuous inspection as a “gold standard” and posit that any shift away from continuous inspection equates to a “downgrade” of inspection services. 15 The debate over safe food thus sheds light on the shifting boundaries between public and private interests, whose expertise matters in decision making, and what citizens can and should expect of their governments in a democratic society.

Government inspections are a typical approach that the Chinese government adopts in executing its policy agenda and propagating its ideological ideals. However, top-down administrative imperatives as such tend to be consuming in resources and less effective in actual governance. They are not necessarily the most sustainable means to ensure efficient governance in the long term. Bottom-up self-governance in rural China, on the other hand, provides the essential mechanism for sustainable governance. In this paper we study one of these bottom-up self-governance approaches in China—rural elections. We propose that, via three distinctive mechanisms, rural elections in China serve as a stabilizer for the entire state and fill the loopholes that top-down government inspections potentially allow. Specifically, we argue that individuals with electoral experiences are less likely to engage in protests, or other forms of collective actions, than those without. This effect holds in that, first, elections improve public goods provision in rural China; second, voters’ personal experience in elections changes their perception of the Chinese regime from being authoritarian to being benevolent and caring; third, elections expose the Chinese regime to emerging social dissent in a timely fashion that allows for self-correction. This theoretical prescription receives strong empirical, statistical analysis using the latest Asian Barometer Survey (ABS 2014) dataset.

The environmental pollution of industrial enterprises has severely restricted the development of economy and society. In the face of serious industrial environmental pollution, this paper constructs a three-player game model including enterprises, government and the public, and conducts a balanced analysis on the interests of the three parties in enterprise environmental pollution control. The results show that the regulation effect of pollutant discharge punishment on industrial enterprises is better than that of pollution control subsidies, and the system with high fines and high subsidies will reduce the enthusiasm of enterprises to comply with regulations.

Environmental protection supervision is an important manifestation of ecological accountability system reform. Taking the implementation of China’s central environmental protection inspection (CEPI) policy as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper applies the time-varying difference-in-difference (DID) model to identify the impact of the CEPI policy on the likelihood of enterprises’ environmental violations. The main conclusions include: (1) the implementation of CEPI policy is conducive to inhibiting environmental violations. After a series of robustness tests, including the parallel trend test, the placebo test, the exclusion of policy interference, and the replacement of explained variables, the result remains robust. In terms of dynamic perspective, there is a lag in the impact of CEPI policy on enterprises’ environmental violations. (2) The effect of CEPI policy is more prominent on samples of large enterprises, enterprises with highly concentrated equity, enterprises that polluted heavily, enterprises owned by executives with a political background, and enterprises that are situated in regions with higher level of marketization and more developed information infrastructure. (3) The CEPI policy can restrain the environmental violations of enterprises by a dual mechanism of releasing punishment and deterrence signals from the external governance, and forcing enterprises to enhance environmental management system from the internal governance.