Slow Food USA: Social Justice on the Menu

By Tom Philpott, Editor of The Grist

“If you haven’t noticed yet, Slow Food is about to get political!” announced Erika Lesser, executive director of Slow Food USA. She was addressing the Slow Food USA chapter — for one day, Terra Madre had broken into meetings of regional and national contingents.

Few could have missed the political turn. Unlike many Slow Food USA events I’ve been to, there were few or no odes to the transformative power of a perfect peach. Here, speakers focused on how to broaden access to healthy, ecologically raised food.

Josh Viertel, Slow Food USA’s new president, set the tone. He announced that the organization would from now forward pursue two main priorities: youth organizing and social justice. “Our food system disproportionately hurts poor people and people of color, and alternatives aren’t accessible to those groups,” he said.

He said that in the past, the group had focused its rhetoric on values: commitment to “good, clean, and fair food,” for example. From now on, it would emphasize rights. “Access to good, clean, and fair food is not a privilege,” he declared. “It’s a right, and we have to make that clear.” That message, he insisted, was the most important one that delegates could bring back to their communities.

He also vowed that Slow Food USA would work to avoid doing something it has been accused of doing in the past: suck the air out the sustainable-food movement by hoarding resources and media attention at the expense of social-justice activists.

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This just in from Slow Food USA:

What will you be eating this Halloween? Is your candy Good, Clean, and Fair?

Slow Food USA has partnered with Global Exchange to spread the word about where our chocolate comes from on Halloween night with Reverse Trick-or-Treating.  Last Halloween, thousands of children, students, parents and others gave Fair Trade chocolate BACK to the households who gave them candy while Trick-or-Treating.  This year, we hope to reach a quarter of a million households across the country in an effort to further awareness about where our food comes from and how it is produced.

While Fair Trade does not address all hardships faced by farmers abroad, its goals are to provide a better price and support sustainable agricultural development. A good resource for reading more about Fair Trade is on the Fair Trade Federation website.

How Reverse Trick-or-Treating Works: The chocolate is attached to a card with information about social and environmental justice issues in the cocoa industry and how buying Fair Trade certified chocolate provides a solution. When someone gives you candy while trick-or-treating, you simply hand them a chocolate and card back.  Reverse Trick-or-Treating chocolate and cards are free. Participants pay only the cost of postage. Visit the Reverse Trick-or-Treating website to request cards and chocolate. The deadline to request cards is October 13.

–by Slow Food USA staffer Julia De Martini Day

Slow Food Buffalo will be doing its part to promote this project by offering 500 of these samples to those attending the Elmwood Bidwell Farmers Market Harvest Celebration on October 25th.  Come out and see us and Chef Bruce Wieszala who will be doing a cooking demonstration at the Slow Food tent using local foods from 10 a.m. - Noon.

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This just in from Slow Food USA:

On Thursday, August 28, Roots of Change unveiled the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture at San Francisco’s City Hall to the public, including Slow Food chapter leaders.  The petition aims to provide a clear statement on a food policy we need which can be endorsed by a broad base of individuals; an invitation to all Americans to challenge their policymakers to support change in the food system; and a set of principles from which policymakers may craft policy for a healthier food system.

Your voice is needed in order to make this call to action heard!  Please read the Declaration at http://fooddeclaration.org and endorse it or make comments.  Make sure to include your affiliation with Slow Food (under “Organization Affiliation”) when you endorse it.

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Slow Food USA has launched a new website that is more approachable and offers easy access to everything you could ever want to know about Slow Food.  Check it out!

In the last few weeks, Slow Food USA has also elected its first President.  On October 15th, Joshua Viertel will take the reigns of our organization on a national level, leading us toward our increasingly brighter future as champions of good, clean and fair food.  The President’s role will be to bolster strategic and capacity-building leadership within the organization.  According to Slow Food USA, “Josh has already made significant contributions to the sustainable food movement as a teacher, farmer, and activist, and most recently as co-director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project.“  You can read more about Josh and the hiring process here.

Finally, stay tuned for information about Slow Food USA’s newly developed Strategic Plan.  How it will effect our organization on both a national and local level should be very interesting.  Once it is available in a downloadable format, we’ll offer it to you here, on the Slow Food Buffalo website.

Until then–happy eating!

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I’m sure many of you have seen or heard about Slow Food Nation, the country’s largest and most comprehensive arrtisan food event being held this upcoming weekend in San Fransisco. If you haven’t, you can check out the event’s site here, or read articles about it in most every major publication available. A quick google will return all kinds of results, but I’ll save you the trouble by offering you these links: Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and more. Also look for a feature in the September issue of Vanity Fair.

In related news, Buffalo’s own Flying Bison and White Cow Dairy will have their extraordinary products featured at the event. In both cases this is a hard earned and well deserved honor.

Finally, for those of you more interested in an up close and personal look at the event, the website CHOW (best known for lumping Buffalo and the rest of New York State in with its ambiguous Tri-State Region classification), has posted a good number of podcasts featuring Slow Food Nation organizers. Director Anya Fernald gives a great overview of the event and chats a little bit about the many misconceptions associated with Slow Food as an organization. Also of interest are podcasts from the curators handling specific food categories for SFN. Coffee, beer, preserves, and pickles and chutney each get a little airtime of their own.

In the next few weeks we’ll post a few other stories providing you with links to important and interesting information about Slow Food as an organization. Stay tuned.

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