Responding to Slower Economy, Slow Food Founder Says 'Slow Down.' Go Local & Organic

TURIN, Italy (AFP) – – The best response to the global financial crisis is to “slow down” and return to local economies that offer better food and help protect the environment, said the founder of the Slow Food movement.

“We are tired of the policy of growth at any price, and of this greed-driven financial world that has destroyed real values,” Carlo Petrini told AFP at the movement’s biennial gathering in Turin, northern Italy.

“This consumer society creates waste, people have been reduced to the role of consumers. We need to slow down,” he said.

“It’s criminal that governments have succeeded in finding two trillion euros for the banks while they can’t find any money to save millions of people from famine,” he said.

“Thanks to this crisis, we can finally find ourselves once again with our feet on the ground and respect the real economy,” added Petrini, who joined a fight in the 1980s against McDonald’s opening a restaurant near Rome’s Spanish Steps.

Founded in 1989 with a snail as its logo, the Slow Food movement campaigns against fast food, the homogenisation of taste and the erosion of local gastronomic traditions.

The movement today counts more than 100,000 members in 132 countries, most of which are represented here every two years at the Salone del Gusto (Taste Salon).

The five-day event, which ends on Monday, is staged jointly with the Terra Madre (Mother Earth) festival bringing together 8,000 farmers and businesses committed to responsible, sustainable food production.

Tens of thousands of visitors flock to the event to savour homegrown products and sample unique taste thrills.

The variety is endless, from the black pork of Bigorre in the French Pyrenees, to raisins from Herat, Afghanistan, to Italy’s handmade buffalo milk mozzarella, to blue chicken eggs from Chile.

Eating well however is far from the sole concern of these “gastronomic activists,” as Petrini describes them.

Stefano Nocetti, a graduate student at Slow Food’s gastronomic sciences university, said: “Slow Food is a way to do politics. For us, the solution is to return to the local, the concrete, to go back to our roots. The current crisis is not palpable, people don’t understand what has happened.”

A shepherd from Sardinia, Michele Cuscusa, agreed: “This crisis is virtual, it’s not something tangible.”

Cuscusa, who makes organic goat cheese, added: “I don’t think it will affect us producers, because you have to eat.”

An oyster farmer from Thau, southern France, echoed Petrini’s urging to slow down. “We have enough to live, we don’t have to run after profits. What’s the point?” asked Annie Castaldo.

For all the anti-capitalist ethos of the event, big Italian companies such as Lavazza coffee and the Coop supermarket chain have stands here, and banking giant Intesa Sanpaolo is a sponsor.

“We are in a transition phase towards a new mode of production, and this shift also has moments of contradiction,” Petrini admitted. “We must be visionaries but pragmatic at the same time.”