Food crime and green criminology

The Criminogenic Nature of Food Production Harm Responses: A Case Study of Anaerobic Digestion Technology Subsidies in Northern Ireland

“…Since then, criminologists have gained a better understanding of the criminal acts embedded in the food chain through the analysis food fraud (Corini and van der Meulen 2019;Flores Elizondo, Lord and Spencer 2018;Leon and Ivy 2017;Lord, Flores Elizondo and Spencer 2017;Rizzuti 2020;Spink and Moyer 2013;van Ruth et al 2018), food poisoning (Tombs and Whyte 2010), food mislabelling (Croall 2012), food safety (Leighton 2016), and trade practices and environmental law (Walters 2006). Additionally, harms stemming from food production have been explored through the empirical research of exploitation in food production (Hinch 2019;Tombs and Whyte 2007), cruelty to animals (Agnew 1998;Fitzgerald 2019;Schally 2017;Tourangeau and Fitzgerald 2020;Yates 2007), effect of pesticides on farmers (Del Prado-Lu 2019), links between technologies and food (Laestadius, Deckers and Baran 2019;Sun and Liu 2019;Walters 2019), and regulation of food waste (Long and Lynch 2019). Some criminologists have considered the responses generated by food production crime: Barbarossa (2019) outlined consumer responses to food safety scandals; and Booth, Coveney and Paturel (2019) discussed a variety of acts of citizen resistance.…”

The Instascams Of Big Candy: Greenwashing, Corporate Harm & Fraudulent Ethical Narratives

“…A food crime perspective seeks to research "patterns of deviance, harm and crime concerning foodstuffs and food processes, along with critically questioning events within their social systems and contexts" (Gray, 2018, p. 12). According to food crime scholars (Tourangeau & Fitzgerald, 2020;Gray, 2018;Gray & Hinch, 2015), a food crime perspective can be applied by considering acts that are 'lawful but awful', viewing legal and regulatory structures critically, highlighting instances of non-enforcement and instances where food crimes remain legal; as well as considering harm committed by companies and the powerful, and the various groups (beyond just the consumer) this harm impacts; identifying actions that will cause harm indirectly (e.g. through climate change) and highlighting the idea that social and physical distance between actors (e.g.…”

“…Utilising these key tenets, the term 'food crime' as it is used in this thesis will go beyond illicit food-related acts which have primarily referred to food fraud such as adulterated food, counterfeit food, food that does not comply with stated claims as well as contamination and food poisoning as a result of neglectful handling (Croall, 2013a;Croall, 2013b;Tourangeau & Fitzgerald, 2020). Instead, it employs an expanded definition that considers acts such as animal cruelty (e.g.…”

“…An expanded definition of food crime also means considering the entire supply chain, with a focus on both the local and the global (Croall, 2013a). This definition allows for the centralisation of the victimisation of food producers, animals and the ecosystem within criminological research (Tourangeau & Fitzgerald, 2020). A food crime perspective is particularly important in the context of this thesis as Gray and Hinch (2015) explicitly highlight that the cocoa industry is a sector where food crime is rampant.…”