“I’ll sign it, now it’s your turnWith this appeal, the starred chef Chiara Pavan, known for her cuisine attentive to environmental and social sustainability, guest judge of MasterChef Italia and above all author of “Environmental Cuisine” (Mondadori), has decided to support the “Empty Cages” campaign launched byessereanimali to ask for a ban on cages in Italian intensive farms.
In the video released by the association, Pavan focuses attention on the conditions of the approximately 600 thousand sows raised every year in our country. In intensive farming, explains the chef, animals are subjected to continuous artificial insemination and spend most of their lives locked up in cages so small that they cannot even turn around.
Furthermore, during the breastfeeding phase, many puppies end up crushed due to lack of space. After a few farrowings, when productivity decreases, the sows are considered “rejects” and sent to the slaughterhouse.
According to data released byessereanimali, in Italy there are over 40 million animals forced to live in cages: not only sows, but also more than 17 million laying hens, 13 million rabbits, 1.5 million calves and around 8 million quails.
A practice that has also been criticized by the scientific community for years. According to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), cages represent one of the main problems for animal welfare, because they prevent fundamental natural behaviors such as digging, nesting, moving freely or socialising.
The consequences would not only be behavioral. Chronic stress, injuries, bone fragility and physical suffering would be frequent effects in intensive cage farming systems. And a recent study cited byessereanimali even talks about a “pain echo chamber”, an environment that amplifies and prolongs pain by deactivating the body’s normal analgesic mechanisms.
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Several European countries have already introduced restrictions or bans on the use of cages. Sweden has banned them for sows since 1994, while Denmark will phase out gestation and lactation crates by 2041.
Austria, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands are also pursuing similar paths.
In Italy, however, there is still no specific legislation to ban these practices, despite – according to the latest Eurobarometer – over 90% of people declaring themselves in favor of a ban on cage farming.
The collection of signatures
The bill promoted byessereanimalihasalreadyexceeded26,000 signatures, more than half of the 50,000 needed to be formally presented to Parliament.
These numbers do not surprise us – declares Simone Montuschi, president of the association. Already between 2018 and 2020, 1.4 million European citizens signed the European Citizens’ Initiative ‘End the Cage Age’. It is a sign of strong and growing support towards the end of one of the cruelest and most anachronistic farming practices.
HERE you can sign too.
