## 1 Introduction  
The European Union policy on meat safety is based on the implementation of good hygienic practices and the HACCP system to prevent the contamination of meat and, therefore, microbial growth. According to EC regulation, indeed, if the procedures during slaughtering are correctly adopted, the hygienic level of the carcasses would be high, and there would be no need for decontamination strategies [1]. It is clear that the EU approach, reflected in the regulatory framework, is based on the prevention of meat contamination limiting further treatments. EC Regulation 853/2004 states that food business operators (FBOs) shall not use any substance other than probable water on food surfaces and, therefore, also on carcasses [1]. Nonetheless, the European legislation establishes that post-slaughtering treatments with substances other than water could be performed only after EU Commission's specific approval. The use of an approved substance shall not affect the FBOs' duty to comply with hygienic production requirements [1]. In this context, the EFSA indicates that weak acid solutions could be considered for carcass treatment after slaughter without safety issues for consumers [2; 3]. The opinions about lactic acid solutions specifically referred to bovine [2], pigs [4], and recently also to goat, sheep, kangaroo, and wild pigs carcasses and meat [5]. The EFSA also recommends that FBOs should validate the antimicrobial efficacy of such treatments under their specific processing conditions [6]. Only the use of 2-5% of lactic acid solution sprayed on bovine carcasses was approved by the Commission, following the EFSA opinion, and is now admitted in Europe [6]. This treatment is not permitted if it causes irreversible physical modification of the meat as well as in carcasses with visible fecal contamination. The lactic acid treatment could be, therefore, considered in the HACCP system as a relevant CCP to be monitored. The possible use of weak acid solutions in other species is not yet allowed, even if the EFSA provides a positive opinion on the use of peroxyacetic acids in poultry and red meat [3]. There are no indications and recommendations on hunted game meat so far. Game meat in industrialized countries is considered a niche production of highly valuable food [7; 8]. The interest of consumers in this type of meat is debatable: There are ethical doubts due to hunting practices or meat consumption [9], while there is also increasing awareness of the nutritional quality of game meat and the sustainability that characterizes its production, compared with meat from intensively farmed animals [10; 11; 12]. In Europe, the number of some wild species has been rising dramatically in recent decades due to several anthropic and non-anthropic factors, such as the availability of widely abandoned or marginally rural areas; the increase in protected areas lacking in monitoring and managing invasive species; the introduction of both typical and alien species for recreational hunting purposes, and other environmental and animal-related factors [13; 14; 15; 16; 17]. The rise in wild populations, in particular large ungulates, is generating impacts on agronomic, economic, environmental (i.e., biodiversity), and public health (i.e., the spread of infectious disease) aspects. Wild boar is probably the best example of this phenomenon in Europe, and it became a relevant issue to be managed by different proponents (i.e., politicians, hunters, and animal rights activists) [18]. In the Umbria Region, central Italy, the population of wild boar is enormously increased, with more than 70,000 subjects and over 20,000 hunted animals in 2021, over a surface of 8500 km\({}^{2}\)[19]. In this region, hunting is the main strategy for population control, but to date, more than 95% of the meat obtained is intended for self-consumption by hunters and/or partially directly sold in small quantities to local restaurants. Both these conditions do not provide the implementation of specific hygienic rules set by EU regulation [1].