Slow Food & Sustainability

The Slow Food Community

Grand Manan Lobster promotes the values of the international Slow Food movement.

Through its understanding of how "gastronomy relates to politics, agriculture, and the environment," the Slow Food movement has become an active player in agriculture and ecology.

In their own words:

Slow Food links pleasure and food with awareness and responsibility.

The association's activities seek to defend biodiversity in our food supply, spread the "education of taste," and link producers of excellent foods to consumers through events and initiatives.

Slow Food promotes the right to pleasure, respect for the rhythms of life, and a harmonious relationship with nature.

Slow Food seeks to:

1. endow issues connected to food and eating with cultural dignity;
2. identify food products and methods of production linked to a geographic area, from a protection of biodiversity perspective, and promote them as part of our cultural heritage;
3. improve public knowledge of food, particularly that of artisan producers, with the aim of securing awareness of our right to pleasure and taste, and to focus this effort on young people;
4. promote the practice of a different quality of life involving a respect for natural rhythms, the environment and the health of consumers, thereby fostering the use and enjoyment of food having the highest possible quality;
5. encourage public debate and discussion in order to raise awareness of the obstacles that exist in the defense and protection of biodiversity and the preservation of culinary heritage

To find out more, please read the following companion paper, or go to www.slowfood.com

Cornerstone of the Slow Food Connection: The Ark Manifesto

To protect small purveyors of fine food from industrial standardization; to ensure the survival of endangered animal breeds, cheeses, cold cuts, edible herbs - both spontaneous (wild gathered) and cultivated - cereals and fruit; to promulgate taste education; to make a stand against obsessive worrying about hygienic matters, which kills the specific character of many kinds of production; to protect the right to pleasure.

As spokesmen for culture, the food and wine industry, scientific research, journalism, politics and the institutions, we hope to persuade like-minded people to join us in the pursuit of these objectives.

By way of a response to the alarm raised by Slow Food, we are launching:

An Ark of Taste to Save the Universe of Flavors The Ark of Taste is the result of an idea conceived by Slow Food. Today, thanks to support from representatives of the world of culture, scientific research, the food and wine industry, journalism and politics, this idea has turned into a project aimed at safeguarding and promoting small-scale fine food purveyors who are threatened by extinction.

The project embraces the scientific and promotional sides of the issue.

From the scientific viewpoint, we undertake to:

1. define methods and criteria for research - in particular, outlining the very notion of gastronomic asset, typicality, tradition and endangered products
2. provide an ethno-botanical and historical characterization of cultivars, local breeds and products as a measure for the recognition of what is typical and/or traditional
3. promote scientific training of experts in the field at a national level
4. set up a networked data bank managed by a central body for collecting the data progressively obtained on cultivars, breeds, products, research, recipes, producers, restaurants and so on.

From a promotional viewpoint we undertake to:

1. draw up and circulate a list of endangered products - known by the public at large and steeped in symbolic value - so that the struggle to defend them becomes as encompassing as possible
2. analyze these products from an organoleptic viewpoint, providing the names and addresses of the remaining producers, and advertise them through the mass-media and specialist publications so that the concept of protection goes hand in hand with that of economic return

1. invite consumers to purchase and eat these products, convinced as we are that extinction can be avoided only if they are fully reintroduced into the commercial/food circuit
2. identify within each region a series of inns or taverns - to be awarded special recognition - that will become active regional promoters of the Ark products, using them on a daily basis in the preparation of their dishes
3. invite major restaurants to select a specific Ark product as their "pet product," protecting and introducing it in certain dishes
4. launch a campaign throughout Italy so that each municipality "adopts" an endangered product, thus promoting its production and consumption
5. implement in the near future a pilot project on a regional or sub-regional scale with a view to verifying and adjusting methods, schedules and procedures for the realization of the overall project
6. promote projects aimed at teaching taste to young people right from school age, with a view to developing people's organoleptic faculties so that they can recognize quality products and draw the utmost pleasure from them
7. prod national institutions into considering the safeguarding of these products - gastronomic assets in general, and not just those in danger - as a major goal for the economy and integral part of Italy's cultural identity
8. associate with similar projects throughout Europe, convinced as we are that protecting typical and/or traditional quality food and agricultural products must become a transnational operation, given the fact that markets and strategies are growing increasingly globalized and standardized.

One such part of the Slow Food educational network is Slow Fish, a gathering to celebrate and expose our gastric relationships to the sea.

Why Slow Fish?

In 14th-century Byzantium, caviar was a poor people's food, and with a fortnight's wages, a laborer could buy a 45kg barrel! It is now in short supply and extremely expensive: 45 kilograms of Beluga caviar cost a fortune.

Will we see the same thing happening in a few years' time for cod, red tuna and mullet? Will fish such as sardines and anchovies still be cheap? Will it still be possible to go shopping for whatever fish you want? Probably not. Fish caught in the sea will be a rarity, a food for a privileged few.

Optimists say that our oceans are a complex system and fish stocks will recover from their present depleted levels. But we have to take into account that demand is constantly increasing, and that destructive fishing methods and pollution are affecting stocks. The crisis in the caviar industry was not caused by excess demand; the numbers and size of sturgeon decreased as a result of excessive organic material discharged into rivers and the Black Sea. Reckless fishing practices in the name of easy money did the rest.

We fear the same thing will happen in the oceans: fish stocks will collapse as a result of environmental degradation, the accumulation of toxic residues (the levels of mercury and dioxins in large deep-sea fish are already critical), the increasing sophistication of fishing methods, the wasteful use of fish for industry or feedstuffs and the accommodating attitude of international institutions responsible for fish.

These are the issues that will be discussed at Slow Fish in numerous seminars and a conference with fishing communities, quality aquaculturists, trade associations, scientists and consumers in attendance.

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With your patronage of Grand Manan Lobster, you can partake in these ideals for sustainability and freshness through the security of knowing your harvester.