The sad news of the death of Carlo Petrini, founder of the Slow Food movement, has affected all who knew and worked with him. In the forty years since he and a small group of friends in the Italian countryside conceived the idea of the movement, it has spread to 160 countries throughout the world. I guess the impact of his loss will have been felt differently dependent on where and when people first encountered Carlo Petrini and Slow Food, and also on their own experiences up until that point. However, once encountered, there will have been few who didn’t feel the strength of his conviction that there had to be a better way of feeding people. He was able to inspire people into action, the grassroots movement providing the framework for bringing like-minded people together, sharing and recording their ideas and actions.
Inevitably, this account is based on my personal experience of Slow Food, one that I can now recognise as deeply woven into the overall tapestry of my life and particularly my beliefs on food.
My first encounters with Slow Food were in Italy, where we noticed their snail logo appeared in food shops and restaurants that had particularly impressed us. It became a trusted guide and as we read leaflets, we discovered that some foods were designated as “Presidium” products – foods of particular cultural significance that were endangered by modern production methods, but which had been saved by small groups of producers. Little did I know at this stage that I would later become the UK’s representative for such producers here and responsible for putting forward our endangered foods for recording in Slow Food’s Ark of Taste. There were strict criteria for accepting products into the Ark, and even more involved in creating a Presidium, but these standards kept the recognition meaningful. More importantly, they provided a framework for bringing producers together to discuss the difficulties they faced and identify solutions together. The success or failure of these food communities was down to how collaboratively they worked – Slow Food had never promised a magic bullet, but where they worked well, producers supported one another to improve.
Rewinding a little, when I first became a member of Slow Food, I was assigned to my nearest Convivium in Bristol. Each convivium had a leader, responsible for organising activities in their area, and as you probably gathered from the name, they were intended to reflect the joy of bringing people together to eat, something that is fundamental to mealtimes in Italy and which Carlo Petrini knew would be essential to bonding people together. The UK press was frequently dismissive of Slow Food as being an elite dining club. However, they missed what came from these convivia. In addition to dining together there were frequently visits to producers, or talks from them, that furthered the understanding of how our local food was produced. Dependent on the specific needs of a geographical area, other initiatives were also set up by the members, for example, in Bristol they organised a monthly Slow Food market, whilst in Somerset (where I had now set up and ran a convivium) we helped to establish a school garden, an idea that Carlo Petrini had put forward.
The grassroots nature of Slow Food enabled much to be achieved all by volunteers. Inevitably there were some who would have liked to move faster and felt that more progress could be achieved by paid employees. Of course, as soon as you bring donors into the equation it creates a completely different dynamic, but those early grassroots years played a tremendous part in shaping my food beliefs. For me, the most fundamental of these was Carlo Petrini’s philosophy on defining quality in food. As Slow Food’s website states:
Over the years he articulated its guiding philosophy—food that is “good, clean and fair”—as a unifying framework capable of bridging cultures and geographies. This principle became the foundation for a new way of understanding food: not merely as nourishment, but as a matter of environmental sustainability, cultural identity, and social justice.
I can remember when I first heard Carlo begin to voice this philosophy. At that time in the UK, The Soil Association was probably generating the most “noise” about the quality of food, whilst still trying to resolve within its organisation what their involvement with supermarkets should be. Carlo Petrini mentioned some organic food he had been given which was, and I paraphrase, at best tasteless and at worst virtually inedible. As the founder of an organisation which was, as I have already mentioned, sometimes dismissed as an elite dining club, he defended the taste element of what constitutes quality food, by stating that that those who were purely concerned with taste were just greedy, whilst those who were only concerned with its environmental attributes were just sad! Carlo was not merely rebuking them, but also setting out his vision of eco-gastronomy, which he went on to explain in full in his 2005 book Good, Clean, and Fair: Principles of a New Gastronomy. You will note that it brought a third element into the equation, that of “Fair Trade” in which producers and their employees needed to be paid a fair price for the food they were producing. Carlo always spoke out when he witnessed injustice, a particular occasion that sticks in my mind occurred when the newly founded Slow Food UK was celebrated with a tour of the Houses of Parliament followed by lunch in the House of Lords dining room. He delivered a strong rebuke that the wine carried the Houses of Parliament’s own branding with no mention of the producer. “Someone has made this wine and deserves to be credited” he said. He would not be impressed by the growing trend towards restaurants branding their own “house wines”.
The concept of a three-pronged definition of food quality certainly resonated worldwide, and the book Good, Clean and Fair was translated into numerous languages. I believe it did indeed “bridge cultures and geographies” and represents his most enduring legacy. In choosing Carlo as the leader of Slow Food the Founding Congress had recognised not only his motivational communication skills but also his calm and thoughtful nature; these were not qualities found in all of the group of friends from which Slow Food emerged!
Carlo Petrini’s desire to use food to address broader global issues stems from Good, Clean and Fair and is behind not only the books that followed but also initiatives such as Terra Madre which began in 2004. The biennial Salone del Gusto food fair staged by Slow Food in Turin needed to reflect his developing thinking. Broadly the Western World was asked to subsidise the global south to send delegates to Turin for the meeting of food communities, which might be farmers or fishers but also chefs, artisans or academics. It was an opportunity to begin discussing global issues and forming new alliances. It was during one of these “backstage” meetings, in my capacity as a Board Member of Slow Food UK, that I first encountered Colin Tudge. His question to the panel was “what were we doing to encourage younger people into farming?”. I think my response, along the lines of the general grassroots initiatives to create a greater understanding of quality food, was not quite what he was hoping for! However, back in the UK I met up again with Ruth West to discuss the Slow Bread project I was chairing. The fact that we are still collaborating should stand testament to the wisdom in Carlo Petrini’s Terra Madre gatherings. December 10th has now been designated as Terra Madre Day when events are organised all over the world to continue the work.
The inclusion of academics in the Terra Madre Communities indicated Carlo’s personal direction in the coming years. He had already created the first university dedicated to food studies. In 2017 the Italian government established the Bachelor’s Degree Program in Gastronomic Sciences, paving the way for the academic. This gave broader recognition of the role of the gastronome: a professional who studies food through its cultural, historical, socio-economic, and environmental processes. Since its founding, the University of Gastronomic Sciences has trained approximately 4,000 gastronomes from 100 countries.
Carlo’s deep thinking on food issues is documented in a succession of books, the last of which A Taste for Change was published in 2023.
In 2022, Carlo passed on the baton of Presidency in the 8th International Congress of Slow Food where delegates elected new global leaders to guide Slow Food into the future. In the words of Carlo Petrini:
“The role of food as the main culprit in environmental disaster is emerging ever more loudly and clearly. Our movement, which has been working for 30 years to ensure good, clean and fair food, must have the courage to take a leading political role in curbing this trend, which has catastrophic implications. We need governance that leaves space for new generations. We must be able to combine the new with our history. The path taken so far has allowed us to achieve goals that once seemed unattainable and has made us what we are. However, today’s world is profoundly different from the one that saw the beginnings of our movement. We must therefore welcome and allow ourselves to be directed by the creativity and intuition of new individuals capable of interpreting the present and outlining the trajectory that will allow the achievement of future goals.”
Edward Mukiibi, better known as Edie, took up the baton as Slow Food’s new president. Edie was born in 1986 in Uganda into a farming family, the same year the Slow Food movement was started at Rome’s Spanish Steps in protest against the opening of a McDonald’s.
At the Commemoration held in Pollenzo just days after Carlo’s death, Edie spoke of the gratitude that he, and all of Africa felt, and urged the world to unite as one global movement in honouring Carlo’s vision.
The full text spoken by Edie Mukiibi at the Commemoration held in Pollenzo on Sunday 24th May 2026 can be read here: Dear Carlo: A Tribute from Edward Mukiibi – Slow Food
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