Chapter 6 Documenting and Investigating the Entrepreneurial Trade in Illegal Veterinary Medicines in the United Kingdom and Ireland Robert Smith & Martin Whiting Chapter Overview Entrepreneurship has the potential to reinvigorate, and perhaps even revolutionise, the veterinary industry. However, it is not a panacea to mend all ills and it can have a darker side as entrepreneurship manifests itself along a spectrum from informal entrepreneurship to criminal entrepreneurship. There is a moral dimension to entrepreneurship (Anderson & Smith, 2007) and with regard to the veterinary industry the illegal trade in medicines is a contemporary example of criminal entrepreneurship (Smith, 2009, Gottschalk, 2009). The illegal trade is a hidden and thus a deniable crime which occurs at the interface of veterinary business and free enterprise. This practice has hit the veterinary press headlines of late and, as such, is both a hot topic and an example of “Rural Criminal Entrepreneurship” (Davis & Potter, 1991). Learning Outcomes To make veterinary students aware of criminal entrepreneurship that may be present in and around their profession. 1