The legislative process of establishing biosecurity institutionalized countermeasures has been accelerated

The 12th meeting of the
Central Committee for Comprehensive and Deepening Reform
stressed the need to integrate biosecurity into the national security system from the height of protecting people's health, safeguarding national security and safeguarding the country's long-term stability, systematically plan the construction of the national biosecurity risk prevention and control and governance system, and comprehensively improve the national biosecurity governance capacity. We should push forward the introduction of biosecurity law as soon as possible, and speed up the construction of a national biosecurity laws and regulations system, system security system.
2nd, at 10 a.m.,
press conference of the United Nations Joint Defence Mechanism. Wu Qian, director of the Information Bureau of the Ministry of Defense and press spokesman, said at the press conference that strengthening national biosecurity is a common practice in all countries and that the international community has always attached great importance to biosecurity. He said the outbreak highlighted the importance of biosecurity. China will push for the introduction of biosecurity laws as soon as possible, and speed up the construction of a national biosecurity laws and regulations system, institutional security system.
october last year, the Biosecurity Law (Draft) (hereinafter referred to as the Draft) was first submitted to the 14th
13th National People's Congress for consideration. The draft consists of seven chapters and 75 articles, focusing on the main issues in the field of biosecurity, focusing on the protection of china's biological resources security, promoting and safeguarding the development of biotechnology, and preventing and prohibiting the use of biological and biotechnology to infringe on national security. In view of the behavior and events such as the fallacy of biotechnology that occurred in the previous period, the law of our country lacks the corresponding punishment provisions, and the draft defines the corresponding responsibilities and penalties, and fills the gaps in the law.
National
Environment and Resources Protection
said that at present, China's biosecurity is facing new situations, new problems and new tasks, the formulation of a basic, systematic, comprehensive and unified Biosecurity Law is very necessary.biosecurity refers to the harm or potential risk of biological factors to the social, economic, public health and ecological environment of the country, and is an important part of national and ethnic security.Chang Jiwen, deputy director of the Institute for Resources and Environmental Policy at theDevelopment Research Centre, said that the international community attaches great importance to the protection of bios security and that China is also a party to the Katahna Biosecurity Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and it is necessary to translate its provisions and requirements into domestic laws and regulations in accordance with its own legislative procedures, so as to better exercise international legal rights and fulfil international legal obligations.
the international level, the United Nations has adopted international conventions such as the Convention on biological weapons, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the International Convention on the Protection of New Plant Varieties and the International Plant Protection Convention, which my country has ratified and made commitments to.
Chang Jiwen said that China has also formulated a number of laws and regulations related to biosecurity, such as the Food Safety Law, the Seed Law, the Infectious Disease Prevention and Control Law, and other departments have formulated some special departmental regulations and standards, such as the Agricultural
Biosecurity Evaluation And Management Measures, the Agricultural
Bio-Import Safety Management Measures, etc. But on the whole, these laws and regulations are not enough to coordinate organically with each other, and it is necessary to formulate a basic and comprehensive law on systematic institutional arrangement, system system construction and systemic mechanism innovation for China's biosecurity protection. The draft is about to enter the second instance, if the second trial can be adopted as scheduled, from the legal level to the international community to declare China's biosecurity protection position and attitude, to show China's protection of biosecurity institutional countermeasures and responsible measures.
Professor Yu Wenxuan, director of the Institute of Environmental Resource Law at China University of Political Science and Law, said that modern biotechnology has the characteristics of a "double-edged sword", and its vigorous development and widespread application have brought great benefits to mankind on the one hand, and caused increasingly serious biosecurity problems on the other. Although China has not yet issued a comprehensive Biosecurity Law, but the comprehensive biosecurity legislation research work as early as the 1990s, after more than 20 years of efforts, the legislative process has now entered the fast lane. The outbreak of new crown pneumonia has highlighted the importance of ensuring biosecurity, and the introduction of a comprehensive Biosecurity Law has become an urgent need.Chang Jiwen said that in the standardization of the main content of the Biosecurity Law, it is possible to solve the main problems and contradictions of biosecurity protection in the light of the practical problems encountered in China.
According to the draft, the scope of norms and adjustments includes eight categories: first, prevention and control of major new outbreaks of infectious diseases, animal and plant outbreaks; second, research, development and application of biotechnology; third, to ensure the safety of laboratory biological resources and human genetic resources; fourth, to ensure the safety of China's biological resources and human genetic resources; fifth, to prevent invasive alien species and protect biodiversity; sixth, to prevent microbial resistance; seventh, to prevent biological
attacks; and eighth, to protect against biological weapons threats.
Chang Jiwen said that the Biosecurity Law needs to regulate and adjust the scope of the content is too broad, the content is too complex, it is difficult to make comprehensive, systematic and detailed provisions. Therefore, we should deal with the relationship between the law and special legal legislation, such as the relationship between the law and biodiversity legislation, the relationship with ecological protection and ecological balance legislation, such as the construction of the natural conservation land system with national parks as the main body, and the relationship with wildlife legislation, such as how to regulate the introduction of alien species.
is precisely because of the wide range of legislation, the draft management system is also clearly implemented "the coordination mechanism under the sub-sectoral management system." On the basis of giving full play to the management of sub-departments, the problems of dispute and coordination will be solved by the coordination mechanism.
Wenxuan said that for comprehensive biosecurity legislation, effective coordination and coordination between relevant authorities is very important. Therefore, in the content of legislation, the implementation of the principle of risk prevention and prudent development, the responsibilities of departments at the management system level and their coordination, the scientific and reasonable legal system and measures, and the existing low-level specialized legislation and related legislation, and other issues need special attention.Chang Jiwen suggested that in order to better carry out biosecurity protection work at the national and local levels, the management system of the Biosecurity Act needs to be scientifically constructed. Biosecurity can be integrated into the overall national security system management system for overall consideration, based on the response to the new coronavirus infection of pneumonia epidemic joint prevention and control mechanism set up practices, the establishment of
biosecurity protection coordination mechanism, under the integrated group, legislative group, data information group, work guidance group and other working groups. The coordination mechanism is responsible for coordinating planning, coordinating the resolution of key and difficult issues, conducting departmental work assessment and supervision.
Chang Jiwen also recommended that, in the area of supervision systems, the establishment of a system for governments at the same level to report to their
and their
on biosecurity protection, and strengthening the supervision of biosecurity protection at the national and provincial and municipal levels
and
. In order to strengthen the
of local governments and governments in the protection of biosecurity and to prevent public health emergencies and ecological disasters, it is necessary to establish institutions and mechanisms for the equal responsibility of the Party and government. In order to play the role of national and local coordination mechanisms, the establishment of national and local biosecurity experts
, etc.
In the establishment of the system, the draft established a common system, such as monitoring and early warning system, standard system, directory list management system, information sharing system, risk assessment system, emergency system, decision-making technical advisory system, etc., and clarified the customs supervision system and measures.
Chang Jiwen said that since the Biosecurity Law belongs to a relatively independent domain law, the scope of application is wide, involving many matters, but also the overall development and protection of the two major relations, to promote China's transformation from a large biological resources to a biological resources power. Therefore, the difficulty of legislation is not small, it is necessary to further coordinate and coordinate, take the goal of legal system construction and the real problems as the guide, strengthen the system optimization, system construction, mechanism innovation and responsibility setting, and make professional contributions to the maintenance of China's overall national security.
Wenxuan said that a number of countries have developed legislation and technical guidelines on biosecurity management. China's biosecurity legislation should learn from the mature experience of the European Union and other countries, especially the principle of risk prevention.