Yellow Pages
An international movement aimed at improving the world’s access to good food and promoting close-to-home agriculture began in Rome about three decades ago.
An activist named Carlo Petrini stood on the 350-year-old Spanish Steps and vowed to fight the opening of a new McDonald’s restaurant he considered an affront to centuries of Italian cuisine.
What Petrini spawned at Spanish Steps has caught on globally, with what the organization’s Web site now claims as 100,000 members in 32 countries, including the United States.
The movement spread from Italy across the globe and found sympathetic adherents in the Skagit Valley.
For Petrini, food had an ideological component. He also disdained TV chefs.
“These chefs should get out of their golden cages, let loose their media chains,” he told the London Observer. “They have to become more a part of society. They should cook for a village, teach children, feed old people in [care] homes, prepare food in hospitals.”
To Petrini, food had to be safe, nutritious and fair, by which he meant the production process should be fair to farmers as well as those who work for them, according to the Slow Food International Web site.
Petrini’s attempt to block the Spanish Steps McDonald’s was unsuccessful, but it did give birth to something that advocates of nutritious, locally grown food could embrace.
If the McDonalds, Burger Kings and Wendys of the world were “fast food,” the antithesis would be “slow food” — thus the name of a movement.
Today the Slow Food movement is not only trying to influence what is served at the dinner table, it is reaching for a place at the food policy table as well.
The White House even sought input from Slow Food USA on some of its appointments to the Department of Agriculture.
The movement has sparked considerable interest in Washington state, which has 13 Slow Food chapters, more than any state except for California and New York, according to the organization’s national Web site.
The Skagit Valley chapter has been among the state’s most active in outreach, building an e-mail list that now exceeds 600 addresses.
The local chapter began about four years ago as a small group of people interested in promoting local agriculture as a source of nutritious, home-grown food.
The valley, with its diverse agriculture, is seen by the group as an ideal setting for bringing eaters and farmers together.
“Why here?” said Carol Havens, one of the original organizers of the group. “From the minute we started we had the feeling that we needed to reach as many people and make our voice as available as possible.”
Havens rejects the notion that Slow Food adherents are effete gourmands interested mostly in delights of the palate. Don’t call her a “foodie” either.
“We’re just eaters, like anybody else,” she said.
The Skagit group has also been able to establish its credibility with the agricultural community, said current chapter leader Terry Burkhardt, who prefers to go by his nickname “Burk.”
The chapter includes some valley farmers on its advisory board.
“We have a very good relationship with the farming community,” Burkhardt said. “We’ve always taken the position that we’re trying to help farmers. We don’t ask for anything from them for free. They should be paid for what they do.”
Slow fooders in the Skagit Valley think they couldn’t be more fortunate. The valley’s agriculture produces nearly 100 varieties of crops, from broccoli to berries, poultry to beef.
Add to that the bounty of Puget Sound and the Skagit Valley larder is well stocked.
On Monday, Slow Food Skagit begins a full week of celebrating locally produced foods, culminating next Sunday in community potlucks at various locations.
For more information, see the group’s Web site at: http://www.slowfoodskagit.org/Slow_Food_Skagit/Eat_Local_Week.html
n Dick Clever can be reached at 360-416-2143 or dclever@skagit publishing.com.
Read more local news in the Skagit Valley Herald and the Anacortes American, or read it online in the E-edition
