The 2025 budget law represents a missed opportunity to make significant progress in the legal protection of animals and in environmental conservation. Humane World for Animals, previously known as Humane Society International, had proposed — either independently or in collaboration with other animal protection organisations — three amendments aimed at addressing critical issues related to animal welfare and the protection of wildlife, with the goal of guaranteeing a fairer and more sustainable future for all species. Unfortunately, none of these amendments was approved, revealing the scant attention that animal protection and welfare currently appear to receive in Parliament.

Combating animal fighting

The first amendment focused on combating animal fighting, a phenomenon that is unfortunately still widespread across the Italian peninsula and is often organised and managed by criminal organisations involved in other illegal activities, such as drug trafficking, money laundering and illegal gambling. This amendment had been tabled by MP Michela Vittoria Brambilla (Nm), president of the Parliamentary Intergroup for Animal Rights and Environmental Protection, and provided for an allocation of 150,000 euros for the specialist training of the Forestry, Environmental and Agri-food Units Command of the Carabinieri, with the aim of improving the law enforcement capacity to suppress this criminal phenomenon. It also provided for an allocation of 350,000 euros for the care and psychophysical rehabilitation of animals confiscated as a result of their involvement in fights. Dogs and other animals subjected to these terrible practices not only suffer injuries and wounds — sometimes so severe as to cause their death — but are exploited and abused in numerous other ways. These include the use of doping substances to enhance their performance in fights, forced breeding, conditions of captivity that are fundamentally incompatible with their nature, and physical as well as psychological mistreatment.

The measures set out in the amendment, at an overall modest cost, would have made it possible to strengthen the fight against a practice that inflicts unacceptable suffering on the animals involved and threatens social welfare, by providing law enforcement with advanced training aimed at suppressing a phenomenon with significant criminal reach. Furthermore, it would have allocated the funds needed to give all rescued animals the best possible chances, through their rehabilitation, of finally finding private individuals willing to welcome them as family members, rather than as instruments of perverse entertainment and profit. Humane World for Animals counts among its ranks some of the world's leading experts in combating dog fighting and offers free training to law enforcement agencies. In Italy, for over three years, the organisation has been working to carry forward the "Io non combatto" project, in collaboration with Fondazione Cave Canem, aimed at training all those engaged in the prevention and suppression of this criminal phenomenon, conducting research into and raising awareness of its dynamics, educating younger generations, and intervening in concrete cases to ensure the psychophysical recovery of the animals involved.

The fight against the importation of hunting trophies from endangered species

The second proposed amendment sought to ban the import and export of hunting trophies from protected species. This legislative change, supported by Humane World for Animals in connection with its campaign carried out since 2020 in Italy and in other European countries, known as #NotInMyWorld, responded to the urgent need to protect endangered wild animals and, had it been approved, would have placed our country at the forefront of the fight against trophy hunting. Between 2013 and 2022, the European Union imported trophies from over 27,000 animals belonging to protected species, with Italy contributing 492 trophies, some of which derived from the killing of elephants, lions, hippopotamuses and leopards. The amendment, tabled as lead signatory by Deputy Speaker of the Chamber MP Sergio Costa (M5S), provided for an annual allocation of 100,000 euros for the specialist training of law enforcement in the monitoring of international trade in endangered animal and plant species, protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites). It also provided for the introduction of a new article to Law No. 150 of 1992, which governs the application of Cites in our country, that would have imposed a complete ban on the import, export and re-export of hunting trophies.

This article defined hunting trophies as a whole animal, or a part or derivative product of an animal belonging to species protected under Cites, characterised by the following conditions:

• being raw, processed or worked;
• having been legally obtained by the hunter through hunting;
• in the context of transfer from the country of origin, being finally imported, exported or re-exported, into or from Italy, by or on behalf of the hunter or third parties, for personal use.

This wording was drawn from the bill tabled in parallel in the Chamber (again by MP Brambilla) and in the Senate (by Senator Bevilacqua – M5S), precisely in synergy with the #NotInMyWorld campaign. The examination of both bills, assigned in 2023 to the relevant parliamentary committees — namely the Justice Committees of the Chamber and the Senate respectively — is still awaiting commencement.

The approval of the proposed ban would not only have discouraged practices harmful to the animals involved, to the conservation of endangered species and to the balance of ecosystems, but would have simultaneously promoted more sustainable alternatives, such as ecotourism. The European Parliament, too, in October 2022, had urged the Commission and member states to ban the import of hunting trophies derived from animals belonging to species listed under Cites. Hope remains that at least one of the two bills tabled will begin — and possibly conclude — its examination in Parliament before the end of the current legislature, so that Italy may join the growing list of countries imposing various types of bans on the import of hunting trophies, among them Belgium, the Netherlands and Finland. As Humane World for Animals has noted on several occasions, moreover, should the Government wish to do so, it could easily adopt a ministerial act to halt hunting trophy imports, as France did, for example, with regard to lion hunting trophies, following the explosion of the Cecil the lion case — killed in Zimbabwe by an American trophy hunter after being lured out of Hwange National Park using bait, then shot with an arrow and left to suffer for around ten hours before finally being killed. Photos of the hunter posing with the lion's lifeless body circulated around the world, provoking public outrage.

The battle to end the cage confinement of animals in farms

The third amendment submitted to the Chamber on the 2025 budget law was part of the European Citizens' Initiative "End the Cage Age" and had been jointly developed by the associations forming the related coalition (in addition to Humane World for Animals Europe, it includes numerous representative organisations at the Italian level, among them Animal Equality Italia, Animal Law Italia, CIWF Italia, ENPA, LAV, Legambiente and LNDC Animal Protection). The initiative "End the Cage Age" received the support of almost 1.4 million certified signatures across the entire European Union. The amendment proposed the introduction of the "Cage-free" distinguishing mark within the national quality system for animal welfare, with the aim of certifying products of animal origin coming from farms that do not resort to cruel cage confinement. The approval of such a measure would have provided an initial response to the growing consumer demand for transparency and more ethical and sustainable products, supporting a farming model with higher levels of animal welfare. To that end, a contribution of one hundred thousand euros per year for three years was envisaged, in order to ensure that certification, inspection, verification and validation bodies were adequately equipped to assess operators' compliance with the use of this distinguishing mark. This amendment, though submitted by as many as four opposition groups — led by MP Sergio Costa (M5S), MP Devis Dori (AVS), MP Eleonora Evi (PD-IDP) and MP Giulia Pastorella (AZ-PER-RE) — was deemed inadmissible and not even discussed.

The approval of these three proposals would have sent a clear signal of legislative commitment towards real change, seizing on the evident progress these issues have made in social awareness. Despite the disappointment over this setback, Humane World for Animals — individually, with its partners and within the coalitions of which it forms part — will continue to work so that these and other fundamental measures are passed, helping to build a future in which the dignity of animals and environmental sustainability are placed at the heart of public policy.