Hundreds of dogs die in the battle between Italian truffle hunters

It is early morning in a forest in Alba, in the Italian province of Piedmont. Truffle hunter Michele Bertolusso walks through the bushes with his white, shaggy dog ​​Maghia. Suddenly Maghia sniffs out a trail. As her tail wags excitedly, she begins to dig and eventually pulls out a black truffle.

Bertolusso happily praises and pets her, even though he was actually hoping for a white truffle. But these are becoming increasingly rare in the north of Italy. And that has serious consequences, especially for the dogs of the truffle hunters, as shown in the new Arte documentary ‘The Dangerous Business of Truffle Hunters’.

These three points resonate after watching the documentary:

Piedmont generates more than 100 million euros in turnover annually through truffle tourism. People from all over the world travel to the Alba White Truffle Festival for the white truffle, the documentary shows. For example, a woman from Singapore who wants to bring a copy to her friends’ home. An expensive gift.

For a kilo of white truffles you pay between 4,000 and 5,000 euros. Depending on how big, beautiful and fresh the specimen is. The mushrooms must be consumed or processed very quickly. They stay fresh for up to three days.

The price for a white truffle therefore varies from week to week. Or put another way: the fewer truffles are currently available, the more truffle hunters can ask for their mushrooms. And the truffles are becoming increasingly rare.

This becomes clear when the Arte reporters visit an 80-year-old truffle hunter who has been documenting by hand since 1975 how the white truffle in his region is declining. He previously found three to four kilos of white truffles per year in his search area, in 2022 that was 500 grams, but this year it doesn’t look any better.

It is painful to see how the 80-year-old in the documentary unpacks his things from last week with shaking hands. You can imagine him going through the woods every night with his dog to find the little white bumps, some of which had been nibbled by snails. Looking for the white gold. He grumbles:

He is angry with people. As the climate warms, summers in northern Italy are becoming hotter and drier. The white truffle, on the other hand, likes it cool and wet. It grows on the roots of oak, poplar and lime trees. Loose mixed forests are therefore ideal for him. But these forests are becoming fewer and fewer. Instead, dense monocultures were planted.

The rarer the white truffle, the fiercer the competition between hunters. Bertolusso from the opening scene cannot understand this hype. He says: “It has become a circus. People only have money on their minds. That’s what it’s all about.” For him and the other ‘Trifulau’, as the traditional truffle hunters call themselves, it’s all about passion:

UNESCO declared truffle hunting in the region an Intangible Cultural World Heritage Site in 2021. Since then, the battle for white gold has reached a gruesome climax. The truffle hunters no longer just cut each other’s tires or harvest unripe truffles. To do lasting damage to each other, they are now also targeting the truffle dogs.

With a sad but composed look, Bertolusso says directly into the camera:

He was able to save three of his dogs. The others died. The saboteurs throw away meatballs covered in razor blades or filled with rat poison. If the dogs eat the poison bait, they will bleed to death internally in a very short time and suffer severe pain.

That is why Bertolusso is always afraid of his dog Maghia during his nightly walks through the forest. For him, she is not just a workhorse, which he trained as a truffle dog for four years. She is his companion. He says, “The death of a dog you’ve been with for ten years is like losing a family member.” You become even more shocked when he adds resignedly:

It is a game, the search for the white truffle. A game that no one seems to win in the documentary. Not even the Trifulau, who still live in simple conditions. There are also truffle buyers who express fear for the future because of the increasingly rare commodity. And least of all truffle dogs. The Italian Animal Welfare Organization estimates that 400 truffle dogs were poisoned last year alone. Never before so much.

The documentary also visits a police station in the region, in Bra. These are known as poison bait attacks. A policewoman says:

A truffle hunter may have two or three good dogs. He normally only brings his best person along on the quest. “And if the best dog is poisoned, it is a great loss.”

She and her colleagues are trying to take action against the practice. But that turns out to be difficult. Very few truffle hunters report it if their dog has been poisoned. Because they don’t want to reveal their secret places where they have been looking for white truffles for years. In Bra, the police use specially trained dogs to preventively search entire forest areas for poisonous bait.

But this approach is also more of a drop in the ocean. A police officer says: “You must come within the first 24 hours after the poison bait is released, otherwise an animal will have already eaten it.” Ultimately, not only truffle dogs fall victim to poison bait attacks, but also countless wild animals.

The documentary leaves you bewildered and deeply sad. You only hope that Maghia and her Trifulau Bertolusso can enjoy truffle hunting together for many years to come and that a poison bait doesn’t put an abrupt end to it.