by intern Heather Teige
As promised, a report on the November activities of our Slow Food on Campus chapters!
This past month, the chapters focused on the “fair” part of Slow Food USA’s mission (“good, clean and fair food”), as part of a national effort to raise awareness of this mission on college campuses this fall. SFOC chapters teamed up with Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA), a national network of students working to end modern-day slavery in the fields.
SFOC chapters hosted fair trade Thanksgiving potlucks to share and enjoy food that was produced justly, as well as to help educate their communities on the importance of fair food. They organized excursions to local farms that use fair farm labor and discussed how food produced under these conditions often results in a higher quality product. They hosted fair trade coffee tastings to promote local initiatives that help integrate fair trade coffee into their communities, and they screened the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) documentary in order to start a dialogue about current labor practices in our food system, and how we can work to change them for the better.
Many of the SFOC chapters have begun to tell the stories of their successes and we are excited to share these on the SFOC page on our web site.
