Agrifood and Health, a Study on Food Crime at the University of Catania

ITA | ENG

Project
This research project, carried out within the Law Department at the University of Catania, involves one researcher and falls within the Agrifood and Health specialization areas.
The study explores the following three aspects: techniques for the categorization of food crime in relation to the use of criminal law protection for preventive purposes; administrative liability of legal entities; the need to give each of the two above-mentioned issues a supranational dimension. With regard to the first aspect, the project will investigate the relationships between the categories of damage, danger and risk, reflecting on the relationships between the types of consumer health offences and food safety offences. The aim is to analyse the problematic aspects that currently characterize the punitive system under consideration in which the misuse by the legislator of heterogeneous categorization techniques gives rise, in the enforcement phase, to instrumental overlapping of offences that do not have a well-defined scope. Special attention should be paid to the following issues: the controversial criminal nature of the precautionary principle, which is mainly applied to the production and trade of GMOs; the problematic “disaster” crime, which may lead to “health disaster” allegations in the agrifood sector. With regard to the second aspect, the study addresses the issue of adapting the punitive paradigm of legal entities to the complex sector of food crime, with the difficulties related to its application to the Italian production system which is mostly made up of small, local agricultural and manufacturing companies specializing in Made in Italy products. 

Financial Resources
The project is funded by the NOP Research and Innovation 2014-2020 under Action 1.2 “Researcher Mobility”, AIM Notice, with a total budget of 183.201,72 euro funding the recruitment of one researcher on a fixed-term contract, in the framework of Line 1 (Mobility), within the Law Department, University of Catania. The project falls within the Agrifood and Health specialization areas since it addresses the needs of the “Health, Food, and Quality of Life” national priority technological development trajectories identified by the National Smart Specialization Strategy.

Impact 
An efficient criminal law system covering “food risk” is a necessary condition for the enhancement of the agrifood chain as a fundamental sector of Italy’s economic system. Only through a legal system able to effectively tackle food crime and ensure consumer health protection it is possible to maintain and promote that competitive advantage in the global market that in the Italian economy is represented by the deep-rooted tradition of a high-quality and safe food production.

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11/08/2021