The Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell'Abruzzo e del Molise "Giuseppe Caporale" is a public health institute with administrative and managerial autonomy, which operates as a technical and scientific arm of the state and the Abruzzo and Molise Regions, performing analytical work for the public veterinary services and providing the technical and scientific collaboration necessary to enable them to carry out their functions in the field of veterinary public health.

The Institute offers high added-value services backed up by in-depth knowledge and innovation in the areas of animal health, veterinary public health and environmental protection, in the interests of safeguarding animal and human health.

The number of employees has grown from around 100 at the end of the 1980s to today's total of about 500. It was in 1990, 49 years after its foundation, that the Institute decided to make its mark in the international context. Over the course of the years, this has proved to be a successful move, so much so that the Institute has become a ceaseless exporter of know-how in the field of research, training, risk analysis, food safety and animal welfare, and in the organization, implementation and management of data banks for registering animals.

On the basis of the experience it has acquired, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture   Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) have assigned the Institute the role of Collaboration Centre and Reference Laboratory in specific spheres of activity.

The qualitative level it has achieved, particularly in the last decade, has enabled the professionals of the Institute to become consultants and champions of the veterinary services of a large part of the world, especially in the Balkan states and the countries of the Mediterranean basin. Even more importantly, they are regarded worldwide as credible and trustworthy interlocutors.  

The challenge continues. And the future will be played out in the field of innovation and development strategies aimed, especially, at one primary objective: to deliver higher quality food to protect human health, by means of environmental and nutritional wellbeing for animals and timely prevention of diseases.

The Institute's ambitions, ideas and major plans for the future will be favoured by the creation of a new central headquarters: an extraordinary and innovative centre of international dimensions, commensurate with the breadth of the corporate policy and the driving force of the Institute's mission.