Food crime involves the various, and often overlapping, patterns of deviance, harm, crime and injustice concerning the structures and institutional arrangements surrounding the production, processing, marketing, distribution, selling, consumption and disposal of food products.

The concept of food crime uses legal definitions of what is wrong or criminal as well as the problematizations of such classification, including (in)actions that are lawful but immoral or otherwise harmful. Many descriptions of food crime tend to focus on types of fraud within food chains, but these are insufficient in acknowledging the diversity of problems that arise involving food systems and all the elements involved.

There are often contradictions between definitions of food crime, where single practices or behaviours can be considered both legal as well as unjust, criminal or deviant whether in terms of means or ends. For example, the world’s most successful chocolate company sells products comprised of cocoa beans harvested using child or forced labour. Similarly, vast amounts of pesticides are used on monoculture fields which leak into groundwater through runoff and contaminate the drinking reservoir of local communities.

Further, there are cases of pluriactivity – or when individuals are involved in both legitimate and criminal or harmful behaviour within or beyond food systems. This may include things such as dairy farmers who ensure the milk produced for food supply does not contain antibiotics because they refuse to treat ill cows and let them suffer, or wheat farmers who produce quality grain but keep seeds to plant in future seasons despite this being a breech of contract with the seed supplier, or the rancher who treats their cattle well but sells illegal firearms from their barn.

Rationale for food crime

Whilst there are cases of individuals in food production roles who commit food crimes for personal rational reasons, many food crimes result from socioeconomic and cultural forces and are facilitated by unequal power relations.

The foundation of food production labour is comprised of vulnerable groups – the majority of the world’s working poor are employed in the agricultural sector, including a large proportion of women in lower income countries – which facilitates victimization by the output-and profitfocused industrial agricultural industry (where one per cent of corporations control two-thirds of the world’s agricultural land).