We all have a responsibility to make sure that the masks we have had to put on our mouths and noses during these weeks and again in the coming weeks do not cover our eyes. Nor should they tie hard the hands of those who should make important and urgent decisions.
Focusing action against Covid-19 by emergency means which do not tackle the root causes of the epidemic is a mistake with dramatic consequences. The main hazard we are facing is to consider the new coronavirus as a single episode, an isolated phenomenon. The other lesson we need to learn is that the way we live on this planet, our unprecedented domination on other species, has strong, negative consequences and some of those take the form of a Covid-19 pandemic. It is the result of the things we do, the choices we make. We are all responsible for it.
We deluded ourselves to be healthy in a sick world. That's why we don't want to go back to the world we were in before, to the world that caused the pandemic.
The bad news is that we have created all this... the good news is the same. Since we created all this we can, we must, change.
1. Directing ourselves to vegetable foods will be our best action against the next epidemics ensuring, inter alia, food for all.
2. Companies must be refounded basing on real sustainability criteria which are not - like "animal welfare" - just a slogan. Even by taking the real Social Responsibility, the State should also signal its intentions, for instance through a differentiated taxation system.
3. Regulatory interventions are needed at national, European and global level, to stop trade, markets, trade fairs, "ready to shoot" breeding, the killing of wild and exotic animals. The stop of hunting activities in Italy, the related "wet markets" and the prohibition of hunting-tourism of Italians when traveling abroad.
4. Stop to public funding for zootechnics and the "environmentally damaging subsidies" catalogued by the Ministry of the Environment, reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and the EU Strategy "From farm to fork" to reflect the real market costs for animal productions; promotion of vegetable proteins.
5. Human-based scientific research needs to be supported, experimentation with forward-looking methods based on alternative technologies should be acknowledged at least as a first step towards an effective "freedom of research" and incentives should be given to disease prevention.
6. Animal protection is also important to promote action on social issues and new poverty phenomena. Coronavirus has made many people discover the importance of living with a dog or a cat. The elder, families and all the people in general, must be encouraged to adopt pets by creating an incentive for responsible adoptions and for the most vulnerable groups already living with a dog or cat.