Goodbyes are always bittersweet, and this one was no different. On our final day at the IZS we gave an important feedback presentation to the IZS researchers and said our farewells to the incredible team in Teramo.
As a group, we discussed areas of improvement for future trips, as well as ways to more familiarize our American students with U.S. legislation on topics such as animal welfare and food security . We would like to share with you a summary of some of the important things we learned:
The main driving force between the differences we saw between Italy and United States is that veterinary medicine and its practices are incorporated into the Ministry of Health in Italy, whereas in the United States they are covered under the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We believe that this delineation, as well as other differences in governmental structure, has led to a superior Italian model in terms of food animal welfare, and especially One Health understanding and implementation.
Because Italians have such a long-standing food culture, they are much less divorced from the origin of their food than Americans. Italian consumers, both young and old, have a notable vested interest in the welfare of the animals entering the food chain, and we think the United States would benefit from learning from and potentially implementing some Italian protocols. We were specifically interested in the food animal tracking methods described below.
One area in which we feel as though Italy is deficient however, is in shelter animal practice and legislation. From an American standpoint, the legislation in Italy hinders the ability of the country to maintain control of the unwanted dog population. All Italian shelters have a no-kill policy, and veterinarians can in fact lose their licenses if they euthanize a dog for a perceived “unacceptable” reason. According to law 281/91, dogs may only be put to sleep if they are seriously or incurably ill, or proven to be dangerous. Though we originally thought that this was a fantastic law, we immediately realized the negative implications upon seeing the shelters in which these unwanted dogs were kept.
After visiting the long-term animal shelter, which housed 340 dogs at the time, we found that having an entirely no-kill country is not only difficult to manage, but also makes a stable adoption program nearly impossible. Combined with the negative cultural view of neutering dogs in Italy, you are left with the commonly used bathtub analogy: Picture the bathtub as the shelter system with a faucet running full force. The water coming in represents the unchecked dog population (abandonments, strays, unwanted puppies) entering the shelters. The water draining out of the tub, much more slowly than the water running in, represents the animals that leave the shelter either by natural death or unlikely adoption. Unfortunately, this leads to a “bathtub” that is filling quickly, and if new protocols are not put into place in Italy the bathtub may well overflow. Although no one truly wants kill shelters in the U.S., they do provide our shelter system with a way to reduce shelter overpopulation and minimize the need for long term shelters.
We believe Italy must use more resources to promote neutering and adoption as a cultural norm to aid in unwanted pet population control.
We also found that the methodology of identification and registration for both food and companion animals is different than in the United States. In Italy, farm animals are identified with not only ear tags, but also a ruminal bolus. This system not only tracks production of each animal, but also tracks shipment and transport. Companion animals are microchipped for tracking purposes, just as in the United States, but they are also identified and registered for epidemiological studies. Because of the stray dog population and potential for disturbances in public health, Italy has found it useful to ID these dogs and track movements, health status, and disease spread. We are unaware of such an epidemiological system for companion animals in the USA and think that the States could benefit from a similar system if one is not already in place.
These are just a few of the differences we noted between the United States’ system and the Italian system. We also found potential gaps in our veterinary education system that we propose to address upon return to the University of Pennsylvania. For example, all Italian vet students are trained with a strong background in food security and welfare. They visit slaughterhouses to assess animal welfare and perform post-mortem meat inspection. Thus far, we have not experienced such a requirement, and due to the veterinarian’s responsibility in educating the public on food security and food safety, it is something we feel as though every veterinary student should be exposed to regardless of their small animal or large animal major.
Overall, the IZS went above and beyond our expectations in creating this program, and we found it very difficult to say goodbye this afternoon. We not only felt as though we had met lifelong collaborators, but also lifelong friends. We cannot thank the IZS personnell enough for their kind hospitality, and we were so inspired by their dedication to educating international scientists about such important topics in veterinary medicine. We learned that this was the first collaboration with such a large group of international veterinary students, and we hope that we fulfilled their expectations as well. We would like to thank Dr. Carlo Siracusa for helping to plan this trip and for travelling with us. We could not have done it without his support and networking connections. In addition we thank Zoetis and Penn (for the Student Inspiration award) for their support to this program. We look forward to returning to the University of Pennsylvania and sharing all that we learned with our peers and the veterinarians at our school. We hope that you all have enjoyed reading our blog, and perhaps you have learned something with us as well. Grazie Mille IZS! A presto!
PennVet Explores Europe 