Images from December 28, 2023. circulated On X (formerly Twitter), she captioned it: “Italy wants 4 years in prison for vegans who don’t let their children eat meat.” The rumor turned out to be spread It’s been happening on X and Reddit since at least 2016, but it wasn’t exactly true. I will explain below.
— I, a hypocrite (@lporiginalg) December 28, 2023
A post published on Reddit in 2020 states, “We want vegans to stop forcing their lifestyle on children, so instead we need actual laws to force their lifestyle on children. It has been enacted.”
Enforcement of beliefs…what a joke.
byu/DivineandDeadlyAngel Invegan
The above post on this topic refers to the heading of an article published on the distractify.com website. At the time of writing, the Distractify article titled “Italy wants to jail vegans for 4 years if they don’t feed their children meat” was not available online. However, he used his Wayback Machine, his online Internet archive, to restore the link.
(Screenshot of wayback machine)
An article published on August 9, 2016 reads:
Last month, police in Milan, Italy, separated a 14-month-old infant from his vegan parents after he arrived at the hospital severely malnourished. The grandparents who took the baby to the hospital said the baby had been forced to eat a vegan diet, but doctors discovered the baby’s calcium levels were barely enough to survive.
Now we are seeing the effects of that incident. A recent bill proposed by Elvira Savino of the Forza Italia party would see parents jailed for four years if they feed their children “inappropriate” food.
Although the bill is still in its early stages, Savino said the law would make parents criminally liable if they force-feed their children, resulting in deficiencies in iron, zinc and vitamins important for growth. It is said that this will happen. Deficiencies in these vitamins and minerals can lead to neurological problems and anemia, she points out.
Reuters published a similar article on August 10, 2016, titled “Parents who demand vegan food for their children risk jail time in Italy.” The article said:
ROME (Reuters) – Italian parents who demand vegan food for their children risk up to four years in prison if parliamentarian Elvira Savino has her way.
Savino, from the conservative party Forza Italia, has proposed a bill that would make parents legally responsible for feeding their children “a diet lacking essential elements for healthy and balanced growth,” according to its text. .
“I have nothing against veganism or veganism as long as it’s a free choice for adults,” she told Reuters in a phone interview on Wednesday, days after introducing the bill in the lower chamber of Congress.
In 2016, the story of the Italian law proposal was also covered by other news outlets such as the BBC, the Washington Post, and the Independent. According to our research, the proposed law was not passed. It was first submitted in 2016 but has since been referred to a committee for further consideration. However, due to the adjournment of the 17th Congress in 2018, this proposal expired without being passed.
We found the bill in question (Disegno Di Legge n. 3972/2016) submitted by Elvira Savino of the conservative party Forza Italia on the official website of the Italian Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of the bicameral parliament).
The bill aimed to amend the “crimes against family support” section of the Italian Criminal Code, specifically Article 572, which provides for “abuse of family members or cohabitants.” Importantly, the proposal does not explicitly refer to a vegan diet, which is “a diet lacking essential elements for the healthy and balanced development of minors.”
The full text of the proposed law is as follows (translated from Italian and with emphasis added):
legal proposal
art. 1.
1. After Article 572 of the Penal Code, insert the following sentence:
” Art. 572-Bis. – (Forcing a minor to eat a diet lacking essential elements for growth). – Except as provided in Article 572, forcing a minor under the age of 16 to eat a diet without the essential elements for his or her growth. A person who imposes responsibility or forces or adopts a person entrusted with the care, guidance, care, supervision, or custody of a person;a diet lacking essential elements for a minor’s own healthy and balanced growth is punishable by imprisonment for up to one year. If the facts envisaged in the first paragraph result in permanent illness or personal injury to the minor, the penalty ranges from 2 years and 6 months. four years; If the death of a minor results in a prison sentence From 4th to 6th year
art. 572 tel. – (The situation gets worse)
– The penalties referred to in article 572bis shall be increased by 12 months if the acts sanctioned in that article are committed against a minor under the age of three. ”
As stated in the legal proposal, anyone who imposes on a minor a “diet lacking essential elements for healthy and balanced growth” will be subject to up to four years if the diet causes the minor’s death. If this leads to this, he will be sentenced to up to six years in prison. Therefore, the bill was not intended to “sent vegans to prison for four years for not feeding their children meat.”
However, vegan diets were mentioned several times in the preamble to the proposal. For example, Savino argued (translation and emphasis ours):
In fact, it’s reasonable to think that vegan or vegetarian food choices are too restrictive as far as children are concerned. cause nutritional deficiencies Even severe ones can affect a child’s physical and cognitive development.
In fact, a vegetarian or vegan diet is deficient in zinc, heme iron (found in meat and fish), vitamin D, vitamin B12, and omega-3s.
Children need good quality protein to grow, but when it’s lacking Defects may occur that may hinder development. For children to grow up healthy and well-nourished, doctors explain that they must eat meat and even fish that contain arginine, an amino acid essential for growth.