Slow Food Movement

Slow Food was founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986, as a response to the opening of a McDonald's [Page 1291]restaurant in Rome's famous Piazza di Spagna. Prior to that, Petrini had founded the national network of social clubs known as the Associazione Ricreativa Culturale Italiana, which was closely tied to Italy's Communist Party. Slow Food grew out of this network. Today, Slow Food emphasizes economic viability and supports artisan food producers and biodiversity through markets, consumer education, and political campaigning.

The success of Morgan Spurlock's anti-McDonald's documentary Super Size Me, and the publicity around the problem of obesity, have led to an upsurge of interest in the effects of fast food, and the ethics of food production. Slow Food has also been active in the anti-McDonald's protests on grounds that the gastronomic origins of its hamburgers cannot be traced or defined. Slow Food has also helped prevent the multinational corporation Monsanto from taking out a patent on the genetic code for basmati rice. As an international association promoting food and wine culture, Slow Food opposes the standardization of taste and emphasizes local or regional foods. Slow Food also defends food and agricultural biodiversity worldwide. The association thus links taste to safeguarding gastronomic resources.

Slow Food has various local projects that aim to safeguard foods, as well as cultivation and processing techniques inherited from tradition, and defend domestic and wild animal and vegetable species in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, France, Japan, and Great Britain.

Slow Food works to preserve local cultural identities by safeguarding traditional and artisan foods. Local Slow Food groups organize food and wine tastings, dinners, courses, and other activities for education and enjoyment. In fact, Slow Food is as much about taking life slowly and enjoying it as it is about food and agriculture. Slow Food has three main projects: the Ark of Taste, Presidia, and the Award for the Defense of Biodiversity.

The purpose of Ark of Taste is to discover, catalogue, and safeguard quality food products, and defend biodiversity. Ark of Taste refers to gastronomic products that are threatened by industrial standardization, hygiene laws, the regulations of large-scale distribution, and environmental damage. Examples of foods and species that are included in the Ark of Taste are the Italian Valchiavenna goat, purple asparagus of Albenga, American Navajo-Churro sheep, a unique variety of Greek fava beans grown only on the island of Santorini, yak's milk cheese from Tibet, guarana (an energy-giving root from Brazil), and chicos (cereal) in New Mexico.

In order to preserve these endangered species and foods, Slow Food tries to ensure their economic viability. Thus, organizational units called the Presidia (defense battalions or garrisons) are used to promote the products and guarantee their commercial future. Protecting the land from degradation and creating new job opportunities are also among the Presidia's goals.

In 2003, Slow Food created the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, an independent nonprofit entity with the mission to organize and fund projects that defend agricultural biodiversity and gastronomic traditions. The Slow Food Award for the Defense of Biodiversity highlights and rewards the activities of research, production, marketing, popularization, and documentation that benefit biodiversity in agriculture.

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