The sector of wild game meat has shown in recent years a steady increase in supply and demand. The preparation of game-based dishes in catering is found with increasing frequency even outside the traditionally suited areas, including our Province, where these meats are part of the local culinary heritage. In this context, the Ministry of Health, through the agreement between the Government, the Regions and the Autonomous Provinces of Trento and Bolzano signed on 25 March, it defined new national guidelines on the hygiene of wild game meat. This agreement was implemented by the Lombardy Region with DGR n. 5067 of July 19 2021.
As a consequence of this, the Veterinary Organizational Unit has issued specific regional guidelines which entrust the regional Competent Authorities with the responsibility of issuing further provisions for the control and use of hunted game along the entire food chain, in order to minimize hygienic risks. - sanitary. The most novel elements contained in the regional guidelines compared to what was foreseen in the old guidelines it includes the adjustment in quantitative terms of the transferable “small quantity”. This quantity has been increased by adapting it to the new national and regional reality in terms of quantities of meat accessible to every single hunter. It must be emphasized that in the Region the obligation has been inserted that the supply of "small quantities" of large wild game or meat from large wild game, or of species belonging to ungulates, to retail businesses, including the activities of catering, located in the territory of the Lombardy Region must take place through a Game Processing Center (CLS).
Clearly, meat from extra-regional territories of neighboring provinces must also follow the same path in order to be sold directly at the local level. This step has two very specific purposes which is to increase the security levels for consumers and to ensure a traced supply chain for game meat. Another important novelty in practical terms is the possibility, in the event that the hunted head is examined after killing by a trained person, of the delivery to the CLS of the carcasses of the hunted ungulates without being accompanied by the head and thoraco-abdominal viscera.
This step, already foreseen by the Community regulations, therefore provides that trained people, hunters trained in accordance with the Hygiene Regulations, verify the absence of situations that deviate from normality in the organs of animals and that report to the official veterinarians what is not normal. Precisely because of the centrality of these trained figures, a new training course has been provided, implemented in terms of hours, while maintaining valid the certificates already issued over the years, but hoping for continuous updating to increase knowledge and preparation. Again in the new regional guidelines, new documentation has been prepared, simplified compared to the previous one, for the delivery of carcasses to CLS and for the occasional sale.
The document confirmed the possibility of sending the carcasses killed following a road accident to a CLS in order not to destroy a high-value food resource. The killing as a result of a road accident and an unfortunate assessment are operations not carried out by the hunting world but by the supervisory bodies and the Veterinary Services of the ATS. The carcass will then be sent to a CLS where an Official Veterinarian will check the edibility. The regional guidelines are certainly a regulatory effort resulting from the awareness of the quality of the resource represented by game meat, but also of the need to establish rules that guarantee the necessary food safety for all users.
The many territorial peculiarities that distinguish not only the regional territory, but also the provincial one, will have to adapt to the prescriptions given, striving to understand that they are not limitations, but an incentive to make the game meat product a product usable by all. Food safety is therefore an essential prerequisite, but quality is also a fundamental element for enhancing the meat of hunted animals (Federcaccia Brescia).
Do you want to see that the government has opened its eyes and has understood that game meat, especially the ungulate one, is a heritage to be valued; if some nations had the faunal heritage of ungulates that we have in Italy; they would do the double somersaults pike !!!!!