Abstract: At present, when solving the problem of food safety, the government still relies too much on the monopoly supervision of the administrative power, which is not very effective. In the context of propelling the modernization of the national governance system and the capacity for governance, to change the monopoly regulation of food safety into a polycentric, cooperative and negotiated public governance pattern should be timely and feasible. The public governance pattern can make full use of the internal and external government resources, reduce the administrative costs, improve the governance efficiency, and better avoid the risk of government failure and free riding behavior. At the present stage, the realization path of the public governance of food safety is to adjust the focus and methods of government regulators, strengthen the main responsibilities for food safety of the food suppliers, encourage the participation of social public powers, and guide the consumers to protect themselves.

Key words: food safety; public governance; monopoly supervision; government failure; polycentric theory