This month I would need many fingers (or sayings?) To stick in the eye of all those who believe in the good intentions of those who lead animal rights movements, of those who consider them heroic and disinterested Robin Hood committed to defending the rights of poor animals mistreated, reared in batteries, only to be killed and skinned while still alive. And then I'm an animal activist too. I too am indignant against those who cause unnecessary suffering to animals, be they breeders, butchers. And also hunters.
I remember a very dear friend of mine, Riccardo Fellini, brother of the more famous Federico. Actor in twenty films, we have seen him in Vitelloni. Riccardo was also a director. I mention his first and only film “Stories on the sand”. He was a friend of animals and an enemy of hunting. But we never quarreled, because he understood my way of being a hunter. Riccardo created with my help a beautiful series for Rai TV entitled "Those animals of the Italians" where he was the first to denounce those battery farms that produced at low cost (in confined spaces, without alternating between day and night, with very high doses of hormones and antibiotics) rotisserie and supermarket counter chickens, steaks, chops, sausages and culatelli. For the first time the camera entered the death chambers of slaughterhouses, in the assembly lines of supermarket chicken, where the poor animals came in alive and came out dead and plucked ... A very hard, merciless series, shared and supported by me, which managed to improve the conditions of life and death of the animals we eat. But in the meantime I continued to go hunting. Legitimately because I considered myself and I consider myself carnivore and predator.
While hunting, I too kill an animal, but free, with infinite possibilities of saving itself, one among many, with the awareness that that shot, not casual but aimed at that animal and not another, will also serve to "prune" that population of ungulates and preserve it and even improve it. And then I will enjoy its meat together with friends and loved ones by renewing an ancient rite of friendship and solidarity.
Enough with the digressions. To me the eye. Let's go back to the often violent defenders of animal rights. They are the crusaders of a new religion, already shared by Hitler and his hierarchs. All animal rights activists, vegetarians and forerunners of vegans. All except Goering, a great and passionate hunter. Extremely violent people. Followers of an extreme ideology, ready for anything, from beating those who do not think like them, to blow up the pylons, to open the cages of minks and other fur animals that have now spread over the territory with serious damage to the species indigenous. Ready to hunt down drug researchers and experimenters. To threaten people like me who defend good hunting, to the point that the gunport that was issued to me by the Digos in the 70s at the time of the "years of lead", I had been kept even after the RBs had been vanquished. Then, three years ago, the commissioner felt that I was no longer in any danger. If he says so ...
Are they extremists, followers of a religion, of an ideology? Of the mad idealists ?. Maybe someone is. But of course they are all part of a very powerful lobby, more than that of oil companies, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, weapons (which in Italy is the weakest, not as powerful as in the USA). Virginia Della Sala and Stefano Feltri denounce this in an article published in "Il Fatto Quotidiano" and on Pierluigi Piccini's blog, which states that "Italy risks a European infringement procedure because two years ago it banned the breeding of dogs laboratory even if it is still permissible to use them for biomedical research. But give time to the Anti-Vivisection League (Lav) and even this inconsistency will be resolved: at Luiss, Professor Pier Luigi Petrillo, the leading expert on lobbying in Italy, opens his courses on the relationship between interests and politics by talking about the most effective group, the Lav. On 29 March 2014, the League obtained a legislative decree in contrast with the EU directive that the Italian Parliament had to implement, the product of a successful lobbying action ”. In the end, politics can only adapt. The animal rights lobby has also managed to change the civil code: any condominium regulation that prohibits the possession of animals is illegitimate.
In short, a powerful lobby, more so than that of petrochemicals, even if it is not certain that they are not connected to each other. Take a look at the publications of this or that environmental association. Sometimes you happen to read “This publication is printed on recycled paper and was made thanks to the contribution of…” and it follows the name of an industry that refines oil or manufactures chemical products. In short, it is no mystery that among the sponsors of some environmental associations there are the big polluters. At the time of the referendums there was the suspicion that the financiers were still them because, by pointing the finger at the hunt, public opinion would have been distracted from their misdeeds. I wrote it several times, indicating company names and company names, I repeated it on television and did not take a lawsuit. Massimiliano Filippi, general secretary of Federfauna writes in an article about suspected connections: "... the animal rights lobby aims to replace leather, furs, silk and wool with synthetic products, almost all derived from oil ..." But this is a bad guy thought!
The first action of the lobby of animal welfare organizations dates back to 1991, the year of the promulgation of law 281 on stray dogs, smuggled as a "battle of civilizations". But in 25 years, the problem has worsened rather than being solved. The expense to deal with it, borne by all of us, has exceeded what is expected for a normal "financial". And, coincidentally, 70% of the kennels are managed by animal welfare associations.
The law 189 of 2004 on the mistreatment of animals is also the result of lobbying. Said like this, it seems a holy and right thing because they wanted to fight dog fights. But the law has become an instrument of power for animal welfare organizations. It is the only one in the world that allows a single person to report a crime (or presumed such), collaborate in the seizure of animals, become their custodian, become a civil party and be the recipient of any sanctions. But we pay the expenses for the investigations, the kidnappings, the trials. And it is always the citizens who pay the costs of appeals to the various Regional Administrative Courts against the laws concerning hunting, circuses, farms.
The floor of Hell is paved with good intentions. And if you still believe the preachers, you deserve a finger in the eye.