Arci Caccia has circulated the letter sent to us by the Honorable Member Andrea Romano (PD), who wrote to management RAI to ask for explanations following the program Guess who's coming to dinner, broadcast on Rai3: “During the transmission 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' aired last February 27 on RaiTre, a prejudicial and heavily negative representation of the hunting activity was given: among other things, confusing the legitimate practice of hunting with episodes of poaching; attributing an active role to live calls in the spread of the avian virus; improperly linking hunting activity to the uncontrolled increase in the wild boar population; alluding without any scientific basis to a link between hunting and spread of "swine fever".
All without any contradiction, without any critical contextualization that would allow the viewer to ponder pros and cons and therefore to develop a balanced evaluation of the subject, without any mention of the cultural, social and economic value of the hunting activity. All this, too, a few weeks after the publication of a Constitutional Court ruling (21/2021) with which the Judge of the Law confirms the full legitimacy, from the point of view of the protection of the environmental resource, of the wildlife control activity carried out by voluntary operators previously trained and authorized and under the control and coordination of the Public Administration.
Further evidence, the latter, that the simplification and trivialization of information that characterizes media approaches of this type (according to the scheme "the man with a weapon who kills an animal is always and only a poacher, or at least a hunter who does not respect the rules") does not take into account the role played by the hunting world in the management of the environment and faunal problems that affect the whole of society, starting with agricultural and livestock businesses but also vehicle traffic, with known consequences also in terms of human lives.
We ask to know if the management of RaiTre had previously been made aware of the contents and the setting of the episode in question of "Guess who comes to dinner". What were the scientific and informative references to which the authors of the episode in question made use of carry out services so devastating to the public credibility of the hunting activity: scientific and informative references to which the public service cannot derogate in the realization of an informative activity that is objective and correct.
If the Chairman and CEO of Rai deem it appropriate, as the questioner believes, to promote within this or other Rai programs the creation of information spaces, also through the involvement and participation of hunting associations, which bring information on this important issue back to the correct tracks and return the full complexity of the wildlife management and hunting activities conducted by many fellow citizens in full compliance with the Laws of the Italian Republic and under the control and coordination of the Public Administration, looking in particular at its historical-cultural value, at the positive social, recreational and cultural impact it has on our communities, at the role of monitoring and safeguarding the balance of our natural environment that it develops ".
I have been hunting for 50 years now, I am proud to belong to thousands of hunters. I carry out this activity because it is legitimized by a state law and by a duly obtained firearms license.