San Francisco, CA: On May 1 ? 4, 2008, Slow Food USA will hold an unprecedented public event, Slow Food Nation, at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. Slow Food Nation will aim to bring individuals and grassroots organizations into a new, united activism that changes the way America produces food and the way Americans eat. Through national and international speakers, a marketplace of the best sustainable foods, taste workshops, a food film festival, special installations on salmon, honey and corn, a sustainable fish barge, a demonstration school garden, and world food stands, the event will illuminate food’s relationship to the environment, public health, social justice and culture.
Alice Waters, International Vice President of Slow Food and the architect and visionary behind Slow Food Nation, brings her formidable accomplishments as restaurateur, educator and food activist to the table. Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean and Fair by Carlo Petrini, Founder and International President of Slow Food, provides inspiration for the event. Petrini writes, ?The crucial point now is no longer, as it has been for all too long, the quantity of food that is produced, but its complex quality, a concept that ranges from the question of taste to that of variety, from respect for the environment, the ecosystems and the rhythms of nature to respect for human dignity.?
Slow Food Nation attendees will range from food professionals to farmers to environmentalists to students and families, and the event will include a Professionals’ Day. Event activities will spread across the city of San Francisco with film screenings and neighborhood dinners. Ticket prices will be affordable. National and international figures who have already committed to participating include Wendell Berry, Troy Duster, Marion Nestle, Carlo Petrini, Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and Vandana Shiva.
Slow Food (www.slowfood.com) was founded in 1986 by Carlo Petrini as a response to the opening of a McDonalds in Piazza di Spagna in Rome. Today, the movement exists in over 50 countries and has over 80,000 members and supporters. Slow Food USA has 14,000 members and oversees a number of programs including Slow Food in Schools, the Ark of Taste and Slow Food Presidia ? programs that protect heirloom foods and endangered animal breeds.
For updated information as it becomes available, visit:
www.slowfoodnation.org.
