Berlusconi Becomes Vegetarian to End Animal Suffering?!

In the year of his eightieth birthday, the former Italian prime minister is reported to have stopped eating meat.

“Ever since I read about how animals suffer as they are taken to the abattoir, and then to their death, I’ve gone off meat. I can do without it. And I will.” Berlusconi went on to say that “We are talking about wonderful creatures. How can we kill them? How can we eat them?”

While analysts and observers are wondering about the current state of Forza Italia, the party’s leader seems more concerned with his personal future. Silvio Berlusconi, in fact, has decided to stop eating meat. Basically, just short of his 80th birthday, the former prime minister has reportedly become a vegetarian.

It seems that Berlusconi’s life-changing decision is a recent one, although it has already had political repercussions. The first was at the presentation of Stefano Parisi as candidate for mayor of Milan, when he included in the “seven cornerstones of Forza Italia’s manifesto” the “defence of animals and the environment”. The text was drafted, complete with policy guidelines, by Michela Vittoria Brambilla. The second was last Thursday, when in the middle of a meeting with regional party heads, he let slip that “I’ve gone off meat.” The third was a few days ago, when he was apparently quizzed by the kitchen staff at his villa in Arcore, who wondered “No more pasta and ragù, then?”, and he replied “Cook it without using meat.”

It is still unclear exactly what led Berlusconi to become a vegetarian. Figures published by research centre Euripus for 2016 report that 8% of Italians have adopted the vegetarian lifestyle (of these, 7.1% are vegetarians, while 0.9% are vegans). The previous year, vegetarians in Italy accounted for 5.7% of the population, meaning that in just 365 days there had been a 2.3% increase in those adopting the same line as the Forza Italia leader. The question is, why? Some become vegetarians out of respect for animals (43.3% of Italians have at least one pet), for health reasons (especially after recent WHO warnings on red meat), or due to environmental concerns.

Berlusconi, at least if we take his recent statements in good faith, seems to belong to the first school of thought: “Out of respect for animals”. It is presumably no coincidence that recently more than one member of Forza Italia, in order to explain the change in the former prime minister’s eating habits, has dug up – from the vast sea of legendary anecdotes regarding him – an old story attributed to his mother, Rosa. The story recounts that as a child, Silvio was so afraid of unknowingly killing an ant that he would have gladly gone around with a bell hanging from the belt. The young Berlusconi thought that this would warn all the insects hidden in the undergrowth of his approach and the risk that he might “cause the death of an innocent being”.

Whatever the reasons for this new lifestyle, the choice to give up meat will see the man who was happy to be compared to De Gasperi, Mandela, or Pope Francis, joining the same club as Gandhi, Tolstoy, Voltaire, Pythagoras and Leonardo da Vinci. They were all vegetarians, as was Erasmus of Rotterdam, author of In Praise of Folly, which has always been Berlusconi’s favourite book.

Will not talk about his Hunger for Fresh Young Live Meat! Viagra does not work for him now?