Farming Intensification in Northern Ireland – A State-Corporate Environmental Harm?

Abstract

Food production may involve serious harms that lie beyond traditional definitions of crime and are not statutorily proscribed. One example of a criminologically under-researched source of harms is intensive farming. Taking a case study of rising intensive pig farming in Northern Ireland, this paper innovatively applies the state-corporate crime framework to analyse the catalysts for environmental and social harm in the country, expanding the knowledge of complex relationships between political and economic actors from a green criminological perspective and further advancing the agenda of ‘greening’ of state-corporate crime (Bradshaw, 2014). It concludes that a state-corporate symbiosis supports and reinforces a market-oriented, profit-driven model of farming that prioritises efficiency and ultimately leads to ‘lawful but awful’ intensification.