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The newsletter for all members of the Terra Madre
network, defenders of sustainable
agriculture, fishing and breeding
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Projects
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Healing with pleasure |
Introducing good, clean and fair food into hospitals
is the aim of a project developed after Terra Madre
2006, which is now running in two hospitals—one in the
north of Italy (Turin’s San Giovanni hospital) and the
other in Germany (Alice Hospital in Darmstadt).
The Alice Hospital program began through the initiative
of cook, Terra Madre delegate and Slow Food member,
Dagmar Vogel, and the efforts of the Education Office
of Slow Food Italy. Dagmar and hospital managers enlisted
Fabian Jauss in the project, a student who attended
the Master of Food Culture course at the University
of Gastronomic Sciences. Dagmar had already
organized four Taste Workshops for patients, visitors
and hospital staff, focusing on seasonal local food.
Fabian developed guidelines to assess producers and
their products, enabling managers at the Alice Hospital
to consult a manual when choosing new suppliers. As
a result, the hospital already provides a good, clean
and Fair menu to it’s patients once a week.
This is a hugely important practical project. Drawing
inspiration from the principles of Terra Madre, it has
built local food networks, strengthened a feeling of
local belonging, offers sick people good and healthy
food which will help them to get better (psychologically
at least!), and encourages other local producers to
offer better quality products.
For further information:
Fabian Jauss
fabian.jauss@gmx.de
Link
to a German TV broadcast by Hessenrundfunk where Fabian
Jauss explains the project.
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University of
Gastronomic Sciences:
The University of Gastronomic Sciences,
the only institution of its kind worldwide,
is an international center of training
and research, serving people working
for a new agriculture, the maintenance
of biodiversity, an organic relationship
between astronomy and agricultural
sciences. It is a legally-recognized,
private university founded in 2003
and promoted by Slow Food with the
support of two Italian Regional Authorities,
Emilia-Romagna and Piedmont.
The campus at Pollenzo, Italy offers
a three-year degree course in Gastronomic
Sciences, and from 2008 will also
offer a specialized two-year degree
course in Gastronomy and Food Communication.
The Colorno campus offers two postgraduate
Master courses: one in Gastronomic
Sciences and Quality Products, the
other in Food Culture - Communicating
Quality Products. With their complex
multidisciplinary approach to nutrition
and food control, and direct experience
of places where products originate,
these courses provide graduates with
knowledge that enables them to work
in the production, transformation,
distribution and promotion of food
and beverages within an international
setting.
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Sustainable food on campus |
In 2001 students, teaching staff
and managers of canteen services at Yale, together with
University President Richard Levin and chef Alice Waters,
launched the Yale Sustainable Food Project. Its aim
was to completely change food culture at Yale, based
on the belief that our food choices have an ethical
and ecological impact, and the best food is seasonal
and produced locally using sustainable methods. The
project ensures the well-being of those eating and working
in Yale, contributes to the vitality of local agricultural
communities and over the long term helps to protect
the environment.
The first practical step was taken in 2003 when students
cultivated some land in New Haven and converted it into
a market garden, known as Yale Farm. It soon became
a model for other urban market gardens on a national
scale and for similar ventures within tertiary institutions.
The Yale Project currently runs a sustainable canteen
service, grows organic crops on campus and supports
various studies on food and agriculture. In bringing
together people interested in similar issues and activities,
the Yale Sustainable Food Project encourages a culture
where meaning and pleasure is found in the links between
people, the land and food. From the beginning, the leaders
of the project worked in close collaboration with Slow
Food and some delegates from Yale were enthusiastic
participants at both editions of Terra Madre.
For further information on the project:
Contact: Josh Viertel
www.yale.edu/sustainablefood
joshua.viertel@yale.edu
Focus on...
Food sovereignty
Food sovereignty is the freedom that people have to
choose the food they eat and to respond to their food
needs through local and national products that respect
an area’s productive and cultural diversity. Promoting
food sovereignty means seeking to ensure that everyone
can satisfy the food needs of their family, local community
and country through the autonomous control of productive
processes which guarantee political and economic access
to healthy nutritious food.
To guarantee food sovereignty it is necessary to promote
and recover traditional practices and technologies which
allow protection of biodiversity and local and national
production. An essential component of food sovereignty
is access to water, land, energy resources and fair
markets. This is only possible with government support
and the help of civil society.
Sovereignty begins at home
My name is Jean-Pierre and I am the coordinator of the
fishermen's community of Lake Tanganyika, in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. The members of this community
have for a long time lived on the shores of the lake,
whose waters abound in fish, and they practice fishing
using traditional methods. A few years ago some Italian
aid workers passing through our area began to tell us
about Slow Food. The ideas of this Italian organization
with an English name made a great impression on us,
because we felt they were true and expressed our own
ideals. So in October 2006 we participated in Terra
Madre, and in May 2007 attended Slow Fish. These were
two incredible experiences which inspired us with the
enthusiasm to return home and create a Slow Food convivium.
We wanted to break our isolation, create an opportunity
to start exchanges with other food communities and learn
from other people's technical experience (as happened
with our Norwegian friends during Slow Fish), as well
as applying Slow Food philosophy to the specific issues
of our region, Katanga.
Slow Food teaches us how important it is to reactivate
the local economy and supply consumers with quality
products: we want everyone—from the Congo and further
afield—to discover that what we produce on the shores
of our lake is good and nutritious, because we prepare
it with care in our local area. When giving information
to our community I use a simple blackboard, but it is
a powerful means of public communication: every month
I attach the Terra Madre newsletter and the information
that Slow Food sends to convivium leaders. So there
are always increasing numbers of people in contact with
the Slow Food and Terra Madre networks who believe we
can eat good food which will remain in our hands on
the future: our food!
Jean Pierre Kapalay
Leader of the Tanganyika Convivium
Mail: lumina_mabue@yahoo.fr
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Slow Food
key words |
Slow Food Manifesto
Slow Food was officially created
as an “International Movement for the Defense of and
Right to Pleasure” on November 9, 1989 at the Opera
Comique in Paris, when the Manifesto was signed. This
is a fundamental document because it contains the principles
underpinning all Slow Food’s work over the years: the
need to slow down and not become a victim of fast
life, the importance of once again savoring the
pleasure of slowness, starting at the table, where we
can relish the satisfaction provided by local dishes
and those characteristic of other cuisines. This is
the concept of conviviality which lies so close to our
hearts!
To read the complete Manifesto click
here.
Voices from
Terra Madre
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Since we opened our restaurant five years
ago our menu has always taken a seasonal and
local approach but we have intensified this
since developing a better understanding of
the core values of Slow Food through attending
Terra Madre. We go to great efforts to build
strong relationships and support the wonderful
work of small scale and artisan food and drink
producers in our region. Our ‘All Australian'
policy means that we seek to use ingredients
in our dishes, as well as all beverages from
the bar, that are sourced locally and from
across Australia. |
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Jared Ingersol
Australian chef
Mail: jared@danksstreetdepot.com.au
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Food Traditions
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Many good fast foods |
Slow Food is not automatically against all fast food.
Considered as an opportunity to eat a quick meal, maybe
when out for a walk, fast food existed long before McDonald’s
began planting its arches in every corner of the globe.
The American chain has standardized and debased the
quality of food on offer, without respecting pre-existing
food traditions. The custom of eating something quickly
while on the move is common in Asia, as it is in Europe
and Latin America.
Away from Bangkok’s busy and polluted main roads you
can have something to eat or drink at any time from
the street traders selling Chinese soup, kwei tiew,
cooked rice in boiling water, served with various spices.
Spanish evenings would no longer be among the most enjoyable
in Europe without tapas, snacks accompanying
an aperitif which vary according to the creative abilities
of the tabernero at the bar and the region
you are in (Galicia, Andalusia, Catalonia etc.).
In Bahia, Brazil, women cook carangueijos (crabs)
for swimmers in huts on the beach. In the narrow twisting
alleys of North African and Middle Eastern towns you
find far tastier and healthier snacks than McDonald’s
hamburgers: meatballs (kefta) inserted in a
round bread loaf, kesra, and flavored with
spicy sauce, alternatively food based on chickpeas or
eggplant. In Athens you assuage your pangs of hunger
with souvlaki, peppery roast meat which is
eaten in pitta bread, a dough of flour and
water with added oil and baked in the oven.
The list of examples could be endless: there are countless
snacks which reflect the extreme variety of food cultures,
without attempting to impose themselves on a worldwide
scale.
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TELL US ABOUT
YOUR TRADITIONS!
Describe your community,
your regional dishes and the occasions
on which you eat them. We’ll post
the best entries in this section:
communication@slowfood.com
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Recapturing
the canteen tables!
For years Slow Food,
helped by the Terra Madre network, has been striving
to put food at the center of our lives. Our efforts
so far have mainly focused on just two of the
places where food is consumed: restaurants and
homes. We still have to make our mark on the vast
area of public and private canteens, which every
day provide food for billions of people around
the world in schools, hospitals, old people's
homes, prisons and companies.
This type of catering perhaps shows the most obvious
signs of our perverted modern-day emphasis on
efficiency. Rapid and inattentive consumption,
tons of avoidable waste. Food preparation and
cooking resembling a factory assembly line with
quality and taste usually subordinate to overriding
economic considerations, never mind issues such
as food sovereignty and strengthening local economies.
The keywords for this enormous sector, which nowadays
employs staff without particular expertise, should
be: service, education, professionality and local
focus. To prepare and serve good food you need
culture, savoir faire and passion. This
should be accompanied by an educational program
which does not only involve those working in the
sector. “Public” food should convey an educational
message, particularly in schools. It needs to
emphasize the importance of local traditional
products, everyday food, and seasonality. It should
encourage people to make proper choices and train
their senses to recognize quality. It involves
defending our local cultures, in which we all
can and must participate.
We must battle for a radical change in the catering
system, starting with a total refocusing on the
local environment. The local dimension is always
crucial for food quality and if we want to ensure
that meals are healthy and enjoyable, food cannot
be sourced from too far away, and the operation
must be managed by autonomous units that can better
control all the phases of the process.
Food is such a vital element in the lives of sick
people, young people, of all of us, why should
we act to our detriment, or allow others to do
so?
Carlo Petrini
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Join
a great international community that defends sustainable
agriculture, fishing and breeding.
Celebrate the pleasure that the finest foods in
the world offer us in all their variety
servicecentre
@slowfood.com |
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Your Questions Answered
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I
would be interested to know what was said about
Terra Madre during Slow Food’s recent
International Congress.
Magda
Alejandra Choque Vilca
Coordinator of the Yacón
Presidium, Argentina
maguijuy@arnet.com.arr |
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Terra Madre was one of the key issues
in presentations and discussions at the fifth International
Slow Food Congress. It was here the official announcement
was made that the international network developed through
Terra Madre was absolutely central for the future development
of the Slow Food Association. This was reinforced by nominating
the community of organic cacao producers in Villahermosa,
Tabasco, recently formed into a convivium, to be coordinator
of Slow Food activities in Mexico, an act of powerful symbolic
value.
In his opening address, Slow Food President, Carlo Petrini,
spoke to the more than 600 delegates present and emphasized
that upholding traditional knowledge and developing local
economies were essential steps in creating a sustainable food
system and guaranteeing our future. Referring to the Terra
Madre meetings, Carlo Petrini stated: “the first edition brought
together small farmers from around the world, the second edition
extended the network to include cooks and university academics,
the next edition in 2008 will diversify further to include
musicians from food communities and young people—students
and farmers—from every corner of the globe.” That’s great
news, isn’t it? We will keep you informed.
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International Congress:
Every four years Slow Food leaders from
around the world gather for the International
Congress. It is an event of major importance
since it is the occasion when we elect managing
bodies and decide the strategic directions
for developing the association internationally.
The fifth International Congress was held
from November 8 to 11, 2007 in Puebla, Mexico.
More than 600 people attended, representing
49 countries. The discussions in Puebla indicated
the priorities for the near future: growing
the movement in countries where it has not
been traditionally so strong and focusing
ever more on local communities and autonomy.
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Did
You Know that
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A hasty sentence? |
The Indian Supreme Court, supposedly for hygiene and safety
reasons, has banned chaat, food snacks sold and consumed
in Delhi’s streets since the 16th century. We feel it would
actually be more appropriate for local authorities to provide
street traders with clean water, functioning waste disposal,
suitable areas for throwing away rubbish and simple courses
teaching basic standards of hygiene: that would allow the enjoyable
and ancient culinary tradition of chaat to be properly
recognized instead of destroyed.
SOS from Mexican cocoa
Following the floods which hit Mexico at the beginning of November,
Slow Food undertook to raise funds to salvage the the Villahermosa
community’s cocoa production in the state of Tabasco, Chontalpa
district. For more information, click
here.
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