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European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research - Call for Papers: Food Crimes and Harms of the Food Supply Chain: Activities, Actors, and Countermeasures

The European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research (EJCPR) welcomes submissions to a new special issue on “Food Crimes and Harms of the Food Supply Chain: Activities, Actors, and Countermeasures”, which will be Guest-Edited by Alice Rizzuti (University of Hull, United Kingdom). 

Important Dates 
The Guest Editor encourages prospective authors to submit extended abstracts for consideration by December 20th, 2024, to A.Rizzuti@hull.ac.uk. 

Manuscript submission deadline: April 30th, 2025. 

Food crime is an umbrella concept that incorporates criminal and harmful activities “that directly involve the processing, production, and sale of food, as well as those that are more indirectly involved in local and global food trades” (Croall, 2013: 167). Modern food systems seem to facilitate the perpetration of such crimes as food supply chains are often characterised by low business ethics, cheap labour and prioritisation of profit over quality or safety – or what the literature has called “cheap capitalism” (Cheng, 2012). 

Practical examples of food crimes include: 

  • Food frauds such as the intentional adulteration of food, counterfeiting, or watering down; 
  • Neglecting or not complying with food safety and handling regulations; 
  • Food mislabelling such as disregarding standards or adopting deceptive marketing tactics; 
  • Exploitation of labour in the agri-food sector; 
  • Financial crimes such as subsidy frauds; 
  • Harmful activities in intensive farming such as cruelty to animals; and 
  • Overuse of antibiotics, pesticides and fertilisers in agriculture as well harmful production of genetically modified food.

Food crimes pose a multifaceted threat, raising questions of social justice and impacting public health, food safety, traceability, consumer trust, and the reputation of the food market. They further undermine food security and environmental sustainability. Moreover, they often intersect with other forms of crimes such as organisational crimes, organised crime, corporate and state-corporate crime, environmental crimes, and financial crimes. 

National and international policy agendas have been focusing increasingly on tackling and deterring food crimes. This has partially been driven by reactions to famous food scandals such as the horsemeat scandal, which affected multiple European countries in 2012/2013, or the 2017 Fipronil egg contamination (e.g. European Commission, 2013 and 2023; Council of the European Union, 2019). 

Recent criminological research has addressed food crimes in different ways. For example, Gray and Hinch (2018) have been interested in discourses around the social and environmental harms produced by the food industry. Others, like Lord et al. (2017a, 2017b) have shed light on the dysfunctionalities of food markets and enterprises that facilitate fraudulent behaviours and how to prevent food fraud. Additionally, Rizzuti (2022) has questioned the involvement of organised crime groups in the food sector. Despite these efforts, food crime remains a relatively unexplored field within criminology, offering significant opportunities for further research. 

Embracing a conceptualisation that refers to the vast spectrum of criminal and harmful practices that are currently affecting the different stages of the food supply chain and, more widely, modern food systems, this special issue aims to advance the knowledge on food crimes and push criminological thinking around food crime towards an interdisciplinary direction. Possible topics can include, but are not limited to, the following. 

General area: 

  • Forms of crimes and harms in the food sector (e.g. frauds, subsidy frauds, counterfeiting); 
  • Drivers and motivations to commit food crimes (e.g. the criminogenic opportunities offered by the regulation of the food market/food supply chains); and 
  • The role of technology in combatting food crimes (e.g. blockchain). 

Case studies: 

  • Illegal fishing; 
  • Trafficking of protected species for food consumption and food-related wildlife crimes; and 
  • Food crimes in the global South (e.g. depletion of natural resources for agriculture, use of genetically modified crops, issues with policies around development aids and food security). 

Policies: 

  • Institutional and policy countermeasures (e.g. the efficacy or inefficacy of regulations and control strategies); 
  • The role played by private actors of the food sector in perpetrating or tackling food crimes (e.g. food crime as business crime); 
  • Comparative and multidisciplinary approaches against transnational food crimes; and 
  • Interconnections of food crimes with other forms of crime (e.g. food crime and money laundering). 

Instructions 
Submitted manuscripts must be original and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. All submissions should be made online to the European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research. Manuscripts will be reviewed by independent referees, as per the journal’s standard evaluation process. The editors will base their final decisions on the relevance to the special issue, technical quality, innovative content, and originality of research approaches and results. All submitted manuscripts must be fully compliant with the journal's Submission guidelines. 

Submissions should be uploaded via Editorial Manager (see http://www.editorialmanager.com/crim). To ensure your paper is considered for this special issue, reply “yes” when asked during submission whether it is intended for a special issue, and select the relevant title from the drop-down menu. You may also wish to mention the special issue in your cover letter. Extended abstracts should be submitted to one of the Guest Editors via email. 

We look forward to receiving your submissions! 

References 
Cheng H (2012) Cheap Capitalism: A Sociological Study of Food Crime in China. British Journal of Criminology 52(2): 254–273. 

Council of the European Union (2019) Next steps how to better tackle and deter fraudulent practices in the agri-food chain. December. Brussels. Available at: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/41865/st15154-en19.pdf. 

Croall H (2013) Food Crime. A green criminology perspective. In: South N and Brisman A (eds.) Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology. London: Routledge, pp. 167–183. 

European Commission (2013) Commission publishes European test results on horse DNA and Phenylbutazone: no food safety issues but tougher penalties to apply in the future to fraudulent labelling. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_13_331. 

European Commission (2023) Overview Report. Series of Fact-Finding studies to Evaluate the suitability and effective implementation of national arrangements to fight fraud along the agri-food chain in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2017/625. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/food/audits-analysis/overview/download/1954. 

Gray AD and Hinch R (eds.) (2018) A Handbook of Food Crime: Immoral and Illegal Practices in the Food Industry and What to Do about Them. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. 

Lord N, Flores Elizondo C and Spencer J (2017a) The dynamics of food fraud: The interactions between criminal opportunity and market (dys)functionality in legitimate business. Criminology & Criminal Justice 17(5): 605–623. 

Lord N, Spencer J, Albanese J and Flores Elizondo C (2017b) In pursuit of food system integrity: the situational prevention of food fraud enterprise. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 23(4): 483–501. 

Rizzuti A (2022) Organised food crime: an analysis of the involvements of organised crime groups in the food sector in England and Italy. Crime Law Soc Change 78: 463–482. 

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