Hunting and Fauna. The dietary habits of wild boars living in the province of Cosenza, and their usefulness in monitoring environmental radioactivity, are today at the center of the attention of Expo2015, as part of the two-day conference "Healthy Environment for a Healthy Diet ”, Organized by AssoArpa, the association of regional agencies for the protection of the Italian environment, and by ARPA Lombardia.
Through the eating habits of the boars present in the province of Cosenza, therefore, it is possible to monitor and map the environmental radioactivity present in the territory, helping to implement the national database of the RESORAD NETWORK, which analyzes the space-time trend of the concentrations of radio elements in the matrices of the various environmental sectors and food affected by the spread of radioactivity and from its transfer to man.
The effects of the clouds coming from the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl in Ukraine (1986), as well as the recent one of Fukushima in Japan (2011), in fact, continue to be controlled also through the analysis, before placing on the market, of game, wild berries, wild mushrooms and carnivorous lake fish (COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION No 274/2003).
The monitoring through wild boars, and more precisely through the analysis of slaughtered meat from wild boars hunted in certain territories of the province, is a project wanted by the Provincial Health Authority of Cosenza - Hygiene Area of Foods of Animal Origin and by the regional agency for the protection of the environment of Calabria (Arpacal) - Provincial Department of Cosenza, with the collaboration of the Territorial Area of Hunting 2 and 3 of Cosenza and by various hunting associations of Cosenza.
The project, the first data of which were presented in Cosenza last May on the occasion of the conclusion of the first semester of operation, was then illustrated today at Expo2015 by Eng. Giacomina Durante, technician of the Physical Laboratory of the Arpacal Provincial Department of Cosenza, during the session entitled “Exploring the links between Environmental and Food Quality”.
Today's afternoon session, entitled “Examples of ARPA's contributions to agri-food production and its sustainability” was moderated by the Director General of Arpacal, Dr. Sabrina Santagati.
Returning to the project, thanks to the contribution of the Cosentini Territorial Hunting Areas, teams of hunters authorized to kill game during the hunting season, in addition to game, collected orographic and zoognostic data of the wild boar, transferring them to the ASP hygiene points. The wild boar meat was then sent to the Physical Laboratory Service of the Arpacal Provincial Department of Cosenza, directed by Dr. Raffaella Trozzo, who carried out the analyzes.
The choice of wild boar monitoring was justified by three fundamental reasons: first of all the uniform presence of the animal in the reference territory (province of Cosenza), but also its eating habits and the ease of finding the samples to be analyzed. An animal, the wild boar, which is uniformly present throughout the region. Finally, twenty-four municipalities in the province of Cosenza were involved in the initiative, both for the collection of soil samples and for game hunted by the teams distributed throughout the territory.
(14 October 2015)
ARPACAL - Regional Association for the Protection of the Environment Calabria
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