08/05/2026

On Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 May 2026, the third edition of the Horse Meat Festival will be held in the Borgo Antico of Corato, in the province of Bari. Food stalls, live music, the now customary lighting and decorations. And the same question that IHP has raised every year since the event was first held in May 2024: why should a municipality organise and promote an event that normalises the consumption of horse meat, when the majority of Italians consider horses companion animals?

At the first edition, IHP had responded with a mail bombing campaign directed at the Municipality of Corato and with a public statement. President Sonny Richichi had called the event "abominable" and had drawn attention to the problem of meat traceability: "Many investigations have revealed that horses with a past in racing and equestrian sports often end up at the slaughterhouse. Beyond the welfare and protection of these animals, there is also the issue of human health, given the concrete and established risk that dangerously contaminated meat — or meat with no proper oversight — may enter the market."

This year IHP renews its opposition to the event. But this year the context is profoundly different.

The bill: where things stand

For the first time in over a decade, a comprehensive bill for the recognition of equids as companion animals — including a ban on their slaughter and on the trade of horse meat — has formally begun its parliamentary process. Bill A.C. 48, with MP Michela Vittoria Brambilla as its primary signatory, into which texts submitted by opposition parties have also been incorporated (C. 2187 Zanella, C. 2270 Cherchi, C. 2585 Evi), has been assigned to the XIII Agriculture Committee of the Chamber with cross-party support.

IHP has collaborated for years with the primary signatory, providing observations and proposals drawn from over a decade of field experience. On 24 February 2026, the bill began its committee process. On 21 April 2026, IHP was heard in a formal hearing: it presented data, technical arguments, and a direct challenge to the positions of those in opposition.

The association asked committee members to consider a simple fact: how many elderly horses are found in facilities that use them for productive purposes? The answer, for anyone familiar with the sector, is well known: almost none. Old horses are absent because they are eliminated when they cease to be profitable. Slaughter is the release valve of a system that uses animals as production tools and discards them when they are no longer of value.

IHP then dismantled the most common objection raised by opponents: if the distinction between DPA horses (destined for food production) and non-DPA horses truly worked, FISE and the Ministry — which proudly claim that all horses used in racing and equestrian sports are non-DPA — should be the first to support the ban. Instead, they oppose it. This demonstrates, unequivocally, that the distinction does not work: that the legal supply chain and the illegal one contaminate each other, and that horses officially "not intended for food" end up at the slaughterhouse regardless.

The conditions for the law to work

IHP supports the bill, but not uncritically. At the hearing it submitted a series of precise technical requests, representing the minimum conditions for the text to produce real effects. First and foremost: the reform of the equine registry, whose inefficient tracking system is the true weak link in the entire supply chain — the gap through which fraud and clandestine slaughter slip through. Precise definitions of the terms "stress", "pain" and "training" are also needed, to prevent every ambiguity from becoming a loophole for evasion. And adequate resources are required: for the conversion of breeding facilities, for staff training, and for the rescue centres that already today take in seized animals without receiving a single euro in public funding.

The numbers: how much slaughter is still happening

While the festival stalls are being set up in Corato, official data — source: Vet.info, the Ministry of Health database — paint a picture of a sector that remains very active. The charts below summarise the latest figures.

Numbers that make one thing clear: the horse meat market in Italy is large, structured, and massively supplied from abroad. The bill — if passed with the necessary technical safeguards — would not only put an end to domestic slaughter, but would also close the door on imports. It would be a systemic change, not a symbolic gesture.

That is why we hope that the Corato Festival of 9 and 10 May 2026 will be the last.