“Stop pigs with wings” and other bizarre laws we can expect from this government

No more pigs with wings. Pigs are not made to fly, and since there could be a clear negative impact of their circulation in the air on civil and military air transport, it is time to present a bill to the attention of parliamentarians, in the name of the precautionary principle and the protection of our farms. The forthcoming parliamentary debate, such as the one that took place yesterday in the Senate on cultivated meat and the related bill presented by the government, could be represented more or less like this: the intention is to introduce a law to prohibit what is not permitted, given that not Italy, but Europe and the respective institutions in charge must pronounce on the placing on the market of any food product, and given that, when this happens, no national legislation will be able to proceed in the opposite direction to the Community one.

But you know, the heat and the Italian imagination can combine to produce in our parliamentary halls and in the offices of the ministries (as well as, evidently, in the minds of the ministers) all sorts of “opera buffa”, the more welcome the more it serves to make the ox electorate rehash mumblings of approval, referring here with this term to that particular fraction of it clearly fasting of even the slightest norm on the subject or of the real meaning of certain political jokes. And in fact, to add a further comic effect, we don’t simply limit ourselves to prohibiting what is not permitted and over which we have no competence, but we go further: we specify, we add details, touches that can underline the irresistible comic genius of the legislator.

Thus, cultured meat is not prohibited “tout court”: in 7 articles, a ban is introduced on the “production and placing on the market of food, drink and feed consisting of, isolated or produced from cell cultures or tissues deriving from vertebrate animals.” Vertebrate animals: here is lightning, here is inspiration, here is the magnificent intuition to arouse universal laughter. Meanwhile, the pleonasm of “vertebrate animals” is splendid: given that we have never heard of plants or vertebrate fungi, the effect, evidently deliberately sought in the lexical masterpiece, is almost that of the famous latinorum of the azzeccagarbugli, even more than that of Don Abbondio, with which he intended to underline the wisdom, the foresight, the clear understanding on the part of the learned towards the poor ignoramus, by means of a plethora of filler terms that are useless, of “vertebrate animals” that roamed the green pastures of Manzoni’s cries. But then, as Senator Cattaneo did not fail to underline, there is the further, magnificent idea of ​​invoking the precautionary principle against something that is portrayed as foreign and dangerous, on the basis of the reference to the presence of vertebrae, while instead it is taken for granted that if one were to imitate, say, the mussels from the Marches or the hairy mussel from Puglia or the lobster referred to by the senator, then the precaution would fall.

And so, we discover amidst laughter, the precautionary principle is finally against the axis skeleton, sacred and inviolable by the impure scientists; precautionary principle which, we learn from the parent company of the League, was rightly opposed to prevent none other than “the latest green gimmick in world finance”. But at this point, having saved ribs and more generally meat with a skeletal skeleton from the aims of the unmentionable shadow world government through a law that prohibits what is in any case not permitted, and awaiting the second installment when the bill passes to the House of Representatives, boundless prairies open up for the action of this government and for parliamentary debates at our expense. After the aforementioned bill against pigs with wings, here are some proposals that could serve as inspiration for other surreal and irresistible legislative entertainment events. The experimentation, production and marketing of products based on unicorn or chimera meat could be prohibited, because they are extraneous to the national culinary tradition and as a precaution against still unknown zoonoses; ban the marketing of manna fallen from the sky, because it is offensive to religion and harmful to bakeries, but also potentially harmful to health, given the air pollution; but, above all, to prohibit the excessive use of gray matter and the acquisition of a certain preparation through study, to avoid offending those who evidently lack both, and as a very useful precaution to guarantee the constant permanence of a backward and ignorant ruling class in the government of this country, regardless of its political colour.