Question Time in the House
The Minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry, Francesco Lollobrigida, spoke at Question Time in the Chamber of Deputies, answering a question on the timing of the issuing of the decree for the distribution of the resources allocated by the budget law for 2023 in favor of wildlife-hunting companies and agri-tourism-hunting companies for compensation for damages caused by African swine fever. The spread of African swine fever and its consequences for the agri-food sector have been in the attention of the government since it took office. It is known that the main cause of the spread of the vector of African swine fever on the national territory is the uncontrolled proliferation of ungulates and in particular of wild boars.
An extraordinary plan
To mitigate the impacts of wildlife, we have collaborated with the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security, in the development of an extraordinary plan for the management and containment of wildlife, envisaged by article 19 ter of the Law on wildlife hunting, as amended by the 2023 budget law; having obtained the agreement in the State-Regions Conference, the plan was finally adopted with the ministerial decree of 13 June 2023. It is now up to the Regions by 28 December 2023 to update the regional plans for urgent interventions in order to make them consistent with the contents of the plan extraordinary. Extraordinary measures are thus introduced for the containment and collection of wildlife to also protect public safety. On the other hand, as regards the more immediate measures to combat African swine fever, I recall that in article 29 of the recent decree law 75, the Government strongly strengthened the powers of the Extraordinary Commissioner appointed for the containment and fight against swine fever, with the aim of rapidly achieve the complete eradication of swine fever.
Exchange of information
The Extraordinary Commissioner is responsible for defining, after consultation with the Regions, the extraordinary plan of catches at national-regional level, with timing, numerical targets for catches and after consultation with Ispra culling and disposal. In addition, the task of identifying the storage areas for captured and slaughtered animals and the eventual disposal of carcasses is left to the Commissioner. I would add that we have set up with the French Ministry of Agriculture, on the border with Piedmont, a technical group aimed at verifying and carrying out an exchange of information on the containment activities implemented by the two States and collaboration on scientific research. Furthermore, an agreement was concluded with the Ministry of Defense with the aim of guaranteeing support also from the army in the context of disposal and strategic analysis with respect to these events.
The necessary refreshments
These interventions are accompanied by support measures for the pig sector, to which you made specific reference. As he recalled, the resources allocated by the 2000 and 2023 budget law are within the scope of the National Fund for pig farming the fund for a specific purpose which are allocated by the decree-law which established it in 2019 and implemented with the amendment to to which it refers. We have given orders for the decrees to be implemented to give relief to the subjects who are entitled to the assigned expenses. For reasons of time, I will not end up with the precise figures of the response but obviously I will make my office available, immediately, to investigate the matter also in a technical sense and verify an acceleration of the times if they have not been adequately in line with the emergency and with the economic criticalities affecting companies (source: Ministry of Agriculture).