Rural rogues: a case story on the “smokies” trade

The embeddedness of illegal entrepreneurship in a closed ethnic community

“…The paper therefore develops our earlier work into illegal and illicit forms of enterprise in entrepreneurship (Smith, 2004;McElwee 2008, 2009b;Smith, 2009;Smith, 2011;and McElwee, Smith and Sommerville, 2011). We have argued elsewhere that with any form of entrepreneurial activity in a given society, inevitably, there will also be evidence of related criminal activity which will seek to delegitimize, or exploit established practice for pecuniary gain.…”

“…The majority of research exploring illegal entrepreneurship, however, has tended to focus on criminality rather than on illegal entrepreneurship per se. Cases of entrepreneurship involving minority entrepreneurs (Galloway, 2007), illegal enterprises (Rehn and Taalas, 2004;Smith, 2004Smith, , 2007Williams, 2008Williams, , 2009, drug dealers McElwee 2008, 2009b) and other such marginal activities (Storr and Butkevich, 2007) Illegal enterprises are not isolated from legal enterprises and have similar networking opportunities and business support as their legal counterparts -factors which are critical for business growth. It is just that these opportunities may tend to be hidden.…”

“…A major problem with researching illegal entrepreneurship is that it covers a wide gamut of activities (Smith, 2004). Illegal entrepreneurs exhibit characteristics, such as strategic awareness, opportunity spotting and networking, shared by licit entrepreneurs (McElwee, 2008).…”

“…There is a growing awareness (Smith, 2004;Wempe, 2005;Fadahunsi and Rosa, 2002) on the characteristics of illegal economic activity:-…”

Critiquing the Inter-Disciplinary Literature on Food Fraud

“…Another type of food fraud is the 'Halal Meat Scam' also known as the 'Smokies Trade' (Smith 2004;Pointing and Teinaz 2004;Pointing, Teinaz and Shafi 2008;Tenez and Pointing 2011). These studies highlight structural issues of concern, such as the fact that they are committed by powerful individuals within the farming and business communities, which make the crimes financially lucrative for those involved.…”