Nice and slow

THE highlight of this past week was the visit of the founder of Slow Food International, Carlo Petrini, to Ireland. This organisation could be described as the Greenpeace of gastronomy — the antidote to fast food culture.

Slow Food defends biodiversity, encourages and supports artisan food production and safeguards foods and food cultures in danger of extinction. Membership has now reached over 100,000 in 104 countries.

Its members are people who have a real concern about what’s happening to food production and who feel very strongly that we should have choice. Slow Food has done much to highlight the problem and the importance of action through projects like Presidia, Arc of Taste, Slow Food Awards, and Salone del Gusto. The latter is the largest artisan food fair in the world held in Turin every second year.