ABSTRACT
One consistent theme in political and economic concerns regarding the environment is the search for a reasonable balance between environmental protection and the costs of providing this.1 This is particularly evident in legal and regulatory considerations. Whether in global, national or local contexts, Du Rees (2001: 115) argues that what is reflected here is:
… a question of the way environmental criminal law has been constructed as a form of legislative balancing act, which involves making compromises between different interests, i.e. economic factors and environmental considerations. [emphasis added]
Some mechanisms of oversight such as that applying to the pharmaceutical industry (Abraham and Lawton-Smith, 2003) have been characterised as victims of ‘regulatory capture’, as they develop over time, becoming populated by personnel crossing between industry and regulator. This control dilemma is well known internationally and can also apply in the case of influencing environmental legislation (Simon, 2000: 640-642). A regulatory system can also be manipulated from the very early stages of its inception (Szasz, 1986) as the case of the relationship between the biotech company Monsanto and successive US governments has shown (Eichenwald et al., 2001). In this example, Monsanto supported regulation of new genetic modification of food crops with the aim of pre-empting potentially hostile and restrictive legislation and also as a means by which to reassure an uncertain public. Monsanto got ‘the regulations it wanted. … an outcome that would be repeated … through three administrations’ but also got flexibility in the regulatory system: ‘If the company’s strategy demanded regulations, rules favored by the industry were adopted. And when the company abruptly decided that it needed to throw off the regulations and speed its food to market, the White House quickly ushered through an unusually generous policy of self-policing’ (Eichenwald et al., 2001: 1).
