Carlo Petrini, the founder of the Slow Food global grassroots movement promoting sustainable food production and local, traditional cuisine, died Friday at the age of 76 in his hometown in Italy’s northwestern Piedmont region, the organization announced.
Slow Food called him “a visionary leader and a public intellectual with a profound commitment to the common good, human relationships and the natural world.”
Slow Food, initially called Arcigola, grew out of opposition to the arrival of fast food in Italy, with a 1986 protest on the steps of the newly opened McDonald’s at Rome’s Spanish Steps announcing their mission.
Petrini was elected president on Dec. 9, 1989, in Paris, when more than 20 delegations from around the world signed the Slow Food Manifesto. He held the position until 2022.
The movement was shaped around the philosophy that food should be “good, clean and fair,” and it spread quickly throughout Italy and to more than 160 countries. Restaurants adhering to the principles display Slow Food stickers, recognizable by the snail logo and formally called the Snail of Approval.
Key Slow Food initiatives included the 2004 founding of Terra Madre, which created communities of farmers, fishers, chefs and academics to spread the mission.
Petrini also founded the University of Gastronomic Sciences, touted as the first academic institution dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of food and food culture — an approach that was recognized when the Italian government established a Bachelor’s degree in gastronomic sciences in 2017.
The university, located in northern Italy, has trained some 4,000 food professionals from 100 countries, Slow Food said.
Petrini also founded the Laudato Si’ Communities with the bishop of Verona, Monsignor Domenico Pompili, in 2017, which applied the principles of Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical through a network of some 80 local groups.
Petrini’s books include “Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean and Fair,” and “Slow Food: The Case for Taste,” which includes a foreword by Alice Waters, a pioneer of the farm-to-table movement in the United States.
