The restaurant serves polenta with bear meat. A portion of 250 grams of meat from bears from neighboring Slovenia, where, unlike in Italy, these four-legged friends are not protected, costs 18 euros. “The idea of offering a specialty with bear meat came about by chance. A relative of my husband, who often goes to Slovenia to buy meat, suggested trying bear meat, and that made me curious,” said the owner and Chef of the restaurant, Monica Paccagnella, of the newspaper “Il Gazzettino”. The taste of bear meat is similar to that of venison and deer, but is sweeter.
Not an absolute novelty
People travel long distances to taste this specialty: the restaurant in Travesio welcomes customers from all over north-eastern Italy. “This special feature of our menu arouses the curiosity of the guests, many travel to us from other provinces to taste the bear meat,” says the owner of the restaurant. “Of course we don’t limit ourselves to just that: we prepare many other dishes linked to the Friulian tradition, such as snails, salted cheese, homemade polenta… However, bear meat is not an absolute novelty: the meat has long been a specialty of the Veneto and Friuli,” says Paccagnella.
Protected animal
The brown bear is a protected animal in the Alps whose hunting is strictly forbidden in Italy. Altogether there are only about 100 bears in Italy. The situation is different in Slovenia: in the forests beyond the Friulian border, around 450 bears live, the result of a well-organized protection program involving authorities, environmental protection organizations and hunters. Precisely because of this higher number of brown bears, hunting in Slovenia is allowed and regulated. Licensed butchers may sell bear meat.
Thorough controls
In Italy, importing bear meat requires proof that it comes from a country such as Croatia, Bulgaria, Russia or Sweden where hunting is legal. “The competent authorities must carry out the strictest and most thorough checks to verify the origin of this meat,” said Michela Vittoria Brambilla, president of the Italian animal welfare organization Leidaa. “The bear is an endangered species. Importing meat from bears killed in Slovenia is a moral crime against nature, which I strongly condemn. Italians love animals and I don’t think they want to eat bears,” says Brambilla.
A comparable situation existed in 2011 at a festival of the right-wing party Lega in Trentino. At that time, the Carabinieri had banned the offering of bear meat because the certificates certifying the import of the meat from Slovenia were missing. The 53 kilos of meat were confiscated.
Source: Nachrichten
