Food Industry In The 19th Century

Historical overview:
In the 19th century, almost every food was counterfeit and adulterated (Accum, 1820 in Wilson, 2008).

In 1820, 15 people died after eating adulterated lozenges (“Bradford incident”). This lead to law reform in the UK (Paulus, 1974).
This showed the urgent need of regulation able to stop sellers from putting harmful ingredients in food in order to make it look better/cost less.

This, however, is still happening today all over the world (e.g. outbreaks of potentially lethal forms of food poisoning such as campylobacter and E. Coli, Lawrence 2004; Pennington, 2003)

Crimes involving food:
Food Frauds: “watering down” food is one of the oldest forms of fraud. e.g. using inferior grapes in wine (Gluck, 2008). Usually fraudulent

There has been recurring exposés of exploitation in the food packing industry, due to a “race to the bottom” to be the lowest-cost producer for supermarkets (Lawrence, 2008). Oxfam and the International Labour Organization suggest that half of the estimated 355,000 deaths in the workplace world wide (every year?) are in agriculture (Lang et al, 2009). Globally, the situation of migrant workers in agriculture, fishing, and food packing has been described as “new slavery” (Lawrence, 2008: 111): workers are forced to live in inhuman conditions, without access to sanitation or drinking water, and being paid less than half the minimum wage (Lawrence,

Discussions of food policies rarely touch on criminalisation and food industries are usually subject to soft regulations, slaps on the corporate wrist (E.g. Chiquita Brands International agreed to $25 million fine after admitting involvement with designated terrorist groups in Colombia to be paid in a 5 years time. That is the equivalent of 3 days out of their yearly revenue. Carolan, 2011). Criminal law requires an illegal act + mens rea (or proof of intent), and therefore has a limited effect on corporate crime since it is often difficult to establish that perpetrators had intent to harm. If someone is criminally prosecuted, it is usually one of many perpetrators, used as a scapegoat, and often not at the top of the corporate ladder. Industry has now accepted strict liability laws mitigated by a discretionary enforcement pattern in which only a small proportion of offenders are actually prosecuted and sanction are relatively lenient (see the Chiquita case), thereby confirming their status as “not really criminal” (Carson, 1979). Sanctions are often been criticised for amounting to little more than monetary penalties and are often seen as “derisory” when related to the turnover of profits of a business and the harm done (Croall and Ross, 2002). Solutions: “regulatory pyramid” (Ayres and Braithwaite, 1992). Severe