Brown bear meat, a protected species of the EU, can be eaten immediately in Slovakia after the populist government has approved the sales plan.
Last month, the Cabinet approved a plan to shoot about a quarter of the country’s 1,300 brown bears in response to a recent fatal encounter.
The state-certified massacre has been criticized by protectionists and opposition politicians, including the European Parliament. Brown bears are listed as “nearly threat” species in the EU by the World Conservation Union.
However, the Slovak government is moving forward with plans, and this week announced that meat from the Kald bear will be sold to the public to prevent waste.
Starting next week, organizations under the Ministry of the Environment can provide meat for sale if all legal and hygiene conditions are met.
Minister Philip Cuffa said it was in vain that the animals had previously been sent to the corpse disposal facility.
“We release all shot animals that meet certain conditions for consumption. Why? Because bear meat is edible,” he said.
Bears have become a political issue in Slovakia after an increase in the number of human encounters, including fatal attacks.
Slovakia ranks second in Europe, and is estimated to have around 13,000 brown bears in terms of the number of attacks, following Romania.
The country reported a total of 54 bear attacks between 2000 and 2020. The average number of attacks also increases to 10 per year, rough numbers suggest.
In April, a man died as he walked through the forests of central Slovakia.
Shortly afterwards, Prime Minister Robert Fico announced the ull, saying, “We cannot live in a country where people are afraid to go to the forest.”
He said his government would shoot up to 350 brown bears – a person equivalent to the entire population of the Spanish species.
His government claims that the bear overcrowding issue led to the attack.
However, environmental groups and critics say the focus should be on prevention.
“The government’s plans were “absurd” and had already failed to limit the number of attacks with this unprecedented cull of this protected species,” Mikal Wizik, a progressive Slovak ecologist and MEP of the opposition party, told the BBC last month.
Wizik argued that thousands of encounters per year had passed without any problems and that the European Commission wanted to intervene.
Miroslava Abelova of Greenpeace Slovakia calls the Culling Plan “completely reckless” and accuses the government of ignoring conservation laws and scientific advice.
Brown bears are strictly protected under the EU directive and can only be killed in exceptional cases, such as threats to public safety.
Bear meat is generally not eaten in Europe and is considered a delicacy only in several regions, including Eastern Europe and some Scandinavian countries.
In most EU countries, strict hunting rules and protected conditions of bears mean that meat is rarely available. When that is the case, it is usually from a controlled cul or licensed hunt, and is not commonly seen in restaurants and shops.
If bear meat is consumed, health officials have warned about the risk of tritinela, a parasite that can cause serious illness in humans.
European Union food safety regulations require that all bear meat be tested before selling tritinera larvae, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stipulate an internal cooking temperature of at least 70 degrees Celsius to kill parasites. It does not make meat safe to freeze, smoke, or dry.
