Deer and wild boars shot. “We’ll pay for the damage with salami.”

An idea has emerged to transform deer that end up under the wheels of a car into a resource for the area. After road accidents, the animals are collected by the Varese Province animal service, analysed, and then sent to the abattoir where the meat that is still edible is treated and packaged, and then sent to non-profit organisations and charities to feed the poor. The amounts are not negligible. If we then add the meat obtained from the selective hunting of wild boars, the quantity is quite significant; during the year, 12 tons of ungulate meat has been collected and served up on tables in Varese Province.

The occurrence is becoming so common that, in the province, another idea has been suggested by the Councillor for Agriculture, Bruno Specchiarelli. “Next year, the meat from ungulates will no longer be given away; we’re looking for a legal and organisational solution that would enable us to sell it, and with the profit, set up a fund to help farmers who have suffered damage by animals.

The solution is innovative. The deer and wild boars that end up under the wheels of cars constitute a danger; it is certainly sad that they should end up that way, but for the experts, they are also a surplus of animal population that causes damage.

This year alone, the province estimates that about €100,000 of damage has been caused to crops by abnormal overpopulations of wild boars, but also other animals, like the miniature hares of Origgio, which gather in a quarry near the new construction site of the Pedemontana motorway, and which come out at night, and ravenously munch their way through the cereal crops around Saronno. Another suggestion, which still has to be confirmed, is to make salami from the deer and wild boar meat, and then sell it; over the next few days, Specchiarelli will explain his plan. Meanwhile, there were another two cases of deer hit by cars, in the last few days, one of which was in Venegono Inferiore, in an area far away from the valleys.