The ‘Underdog’ as ‘Ideal Victim’? The Attribution of Victimhood in the 2007 Pet Food Recall

Despite the increasing attention being paid to harm perpetrated against the environment and nonhuman animals within criminology, largely under the banner of ‘green criminology’, there has been little engagement with the victimology literature in researching and theorizing these forms of victimization. This paper uses the case of the 2007 pet food recall to demonstrate that an examination of harm perpetrated against nonhuman animals will require engaging with both the green criminological and victimological literatures. The findings of this study indicate that despite the popular cultural conceptualization of nonhuman animals as the ultimate ‘underdogs’ or ‘ideal victims’, their extreme level of vulnerability does not translate into the ascription of victimhood in newsprint media. This paper demonstrates that the bridging of green criminology and victimology provides a conceptual space to take seriously and theorize the ways in which animals are victimized and to illustrate how conceptualizations of victim and victimhood are socially, historically, and certainly species specific.