2011-2021
OUR HISTORY

After 10 years of campaigning, Italy banned the breeding of animals for fur production and closed the last mink farms.

We collected 198,000 signatures for the No Animal Left Behind campaign, to change the future of farmed animals in Europe.

An entire subway in Milan was covered with large adverts for a campaign linked to World Oceans Day, which invited citizens to rethink their consumption of fish.

We published the first Italian website that allowed people to report mistreatment and other crimes within farms and slaughterhouses.

After numerous protests and campaigns, the Ministry of Health imposed a one-year suspension of mink farms.

Our images were used by numerous TV programmes to show the link between the spread of zoonotic diseases and factory farms.

Essere Animali officially brought Veganuary, the largest vegan challenge in the world, to Italy. The initiative was a great success and Italy became one of the countries with the highest number of participants.

3 mink farms were closed thanks to our continuous legal actions.

The MenoPerPiù (LessForMore) project was launched to change the menus of corporate and school canteens.

We released the first investigation in Europe to be conducted on intensive fish farms. The investigation was broadcast exclusively by The Guardian and served as a stimulus for a wider movement in defence of these animals. The Ancheipesci (FishToo) campaign was launched.

A journalist from the Daily Mail accompanied us to various pig farms producing animals for Parma ham: the footage created a scandal in the UK.

First investigation at a chick hatchery in Italy, with chicks destined to become broilers. Our undercover investigator documented all the issues on the farm and the investigation was broadcast on the TV programme Striscia la Notizia.

The dolphinarium in Rimini closed. Since 2011, we had carried out our campaigns and protests with this objective in mind.

New investigation on 8 farms supplying Parma ham, carried out to show that the previous investigation was not an isolated case and that the problems are widespread.

Publication of the Prosciutto crudele (Cruel ham) investigation, the result of 6 months of filming on a farm supplying Parma ham. It was seen on social media by over half a million people and disseminated by international media, even as far away as China and Hong Kong.

We reported a farm with 10,000 rabbits, leading to its closure. The footage, filmed together with a journalist, had been broadcast on TV by Piazza Pulita.

Free minks campaign: the first sanctions were introduced as a result of our reports of the presence of asbestos in mink farms and we also mobilised efforts to stop the opening of a new farm in Villadose (RO) (the farm did open but thanks to legal action, we managed to bring it to closure in 2019).

We carried out an investigation into farms producing foie gras in France and launched the #ViaDagliScaffali (OffTheShelves) campaign, aimed at Italian supermarkets. Pam Panorama was the first supermarket to join and stop selling this cruel product.

We started a blog in the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano, which allowed us to talk about animal rights to a wider audience.

First video mob in Milan: 50 people with tablets showing the reality behind fur farms in Italy.

The first edition of Settimana Veg (Veg Week), an event that over the years has become an important annual event and has helped thousands of people to move towards a plant-based diet.

The construction of a farm that was supposed to hold 40,000 minks in the province of Modena was stopped. We had already stopped the same project in the province of Cremona.

Dissemination on TV of the first investigation on Italian mink farms, which we spent 18 months working on, and the launch of the Visoni Liberi (Free Minks) campaign to abolish this cruel practice.