The Easter tradition will be respected again this year and lamb dishes will be served on the tables of one out of two families. If Lamb remains the traditional dish, it must also be said that in recent years various press campaigns and the activism of animal rights groups have achieved a reduction in consumption noticeably. A report published by Codacons already indicated thelast year a 10 percent reduction in lamb consumption in line with a market trend that for years has seen Italians choosing to celebrate Easter without lamb. And, in fact, if in the 2013 4 million animals were slaughtered after three years in 2016 the slaughtered animals were reduced by 50 percent to two million units.
And in any case, those who do not intend to give up lamb on the table do not intend to give up the quality of its meat as attested by a Coldiretti/Ixe' survey on the occasion of the "Quality and origin on the table" initiative organized with Codacons on the eve of Easter with the agrichefs of Campagna Amica.
88% of Italians make purchases towards meat of national origin with almost 1/4 of consumers who have even chosen to buy directly from the shepherd, a decision - underlines Coldiretti - motivated by the need to personally guarantee the origin in a situation where the majority of the offer comes from abroad and above all from Romania and Greece which do not ensure the same quality standards.
But there are also other aspects to consider in addition to quality and they are those of preservation of pastoralism and solidarity with inland areasand which have suffered the effects of the various earthquakes which have followed one another along the central Apennines in recent years.
With the traditional lunch of In fact, at Easter a large part of the approximately 1,5 kilos of lamb consumed by Italians is purchased throughout the year. It should also be borne in mind that ten years after the L'Aquila earthquake, bringing lamb meat to the table means – for Coldiretti – helping the recovery of areas severely hit by the earthquake in recent years, starting from Abruzzo, but also Umbria, the Marches and Lazio where sheep farming is deeply rooted. A support also for Sardinian shepherds engaged in a difficult battle for survival due to prices that do not cover production costs, as unfortunately happens in many regions. In recent years, it has been evaluated, one million sheep have disappeared from the 60 farms in Italy where 6,2 million animals remained, mostly located in Sardinia. Pastoralism - underlines the association - is a very hard profession rich in tradition that forces us to wake up at 5 in the morning for the first milking which will be repeated in the afternoon to obtain from each sheep about one liter of milk per day which is underpaid . A trade at risk of extinction due to prices often lower than production costs, attacks by wild animals, unfair competition from foreign products passed off as nationals and the massive land consumption which in Italy has drastically reduced green spaces and traditional paths along the rivers up to the highland pastures historically used for the transhumance of flocks for which Italy has requested recognition as a UNESCO heritage site.
It is, in fact, a work with a high environmental value since it is an activity which is concentrated in disadvantaged areas and which guarantees the safeguarding of 38 breeds for the benefit of the biodiversity of the area, from the rustic Sardinian sheep to the Sopravissana sheep with excellent wool, from the Lamon sheep with a large head and no horns in both sexes to the Brogna sheep with a woolless head and limbs, from the Comisana sheep with the characteristic red head to the Massa one with unusual black mantle that represent a heritage of biodiversity whose future is threatened by a concrete risk of extinction. A heritage that the farmers of Campagna Amica are committed to defending with "The seals", products and animals of Italian agricultural biodiversity that over the decades have been snatched from extinction or inextricably linked to specific territories.
