For clandestine slaughter we mean the killing of animals intended for human consumption carried out outside the schemes and regulations approved at the institutional level. 

Food safety issues arise from illegal slaughter : the pandemic crisis has brought attention back to this often underestimated problem. In fact, the responsibilities of the virus have been sought in the markets of animals exploited for food.

Beyond the Covid emergency, it is known that  the so-called  clandestine slaughtering is added to the illegal livestock markets  and the trafficking of stolen farm animals . Let’s see what it is about more specifically.

The theft of animals among the causes

According to various estimates collected by LAV (Anti-Vivisection League), more than 150 thousand farm animals disappear into thin air every year. This offense is known as abigeate .

These animals can be slaughtered clandestinely , or to avoid the disposal of dead specimens on farms or to avoid slaughtering sick animals, which would make little money from an economic point of view.

As Ciro Troiano, criminologist and head of the LAV Zoomafia Observatory explains  in a document that sheds light on clandestine slaughter, the forms of crime can be divided into four types :

• domestic (or for own use), 
• organized  (due to criminal trafficking), 
• hunting (due to poaching)
• ethnic , attributable to ethnic or religious food traditions.

The clandestine domestic slaughter

As explained in this article by Ciro Traiano, illegal domestic slaughter is the most widespread and “is grafted into a cultural fabric of local traditions and peasant habits”. 

Most of the time the animals are already  legally raised , but they are slaughtered in violation of the rules governing the slaughter and processing of meat.

There is no shortage of cases of clandestine domestic breeding , “without any kind of control and without any semblance of protection for animals”: among these there is the typical example of  pigs reared at home , which are often not declared.

From a health point of view, Troiano still reads, ” the danger is contained , but with the increase in interest in local, non-industrial, more ‘genuine’ products, domestic slaughtering can evolve into forms of uncontrolled meat trade. and derivatives , and consequently also the danger for possible health problems increases “.
 

Organized slaughter

Organized slaughter is that attributable to criminal trafficking. It is the most dangerous , as its activities range from habitué to the clandestine distribution of meat, without any scruple for the  health of people and for the life of animals.

Several investigations have shown the existence of  slaughtering of animals suffering from diseases and the consequent placing on the market of meat not suitable for consumption.

Furthermore, the danger of organized slaughter is also demonstrated by the degree of corruption or, as Ciro Troiano writes, the “ability of the organizers to weave connivance and complicity withbelonging to the public administration in charge of surveillance , public veterinarians colluding in primis, but also exponents of the public administration “.

This connivance often means that this type of slaughter takes place  in authorized slaughterhouses , officially in accordance with and respectful of the rules, thanks to the  complicity of the employees to the controls and managers of the structures.

Poaching and the ethnic question

There is another line of illegal slaughtering attributable to poaching , or to all those  forms of prohibited hunting where  mainly wild boar, roe deer, red deer and fallow deer are involved .

The slaughter of this type, therefore, is relegated to the hunting world, to which is added the illegal capture of animals, especially  birds used for culinary purposes . Not only  hunters but also  complacent restaurateurs are involved.

Regarding ethnic slaughter , Troiano reminds us that there is regulation in our country and therefore it can be carried out in a legal way, respecting the rituals dictated by the cultural or religious traditions of the slaughterer.