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Slow Down, Slow Food!

Slow Food Nation was magnificent in many ways, but overshot its mandate

By Tom Philpott - 05 Sep 2008

"Slow Food Nation -- that grand, sprawling culinary event that seemed to permeate San Francisco over Labor Day weekend -- has passed. Now we can ask: What was it? A brazen display of foodie elitism, as some critics charge? A transformative moment in an ongoing effort to overthrow the industrial food system, as its organizers sometimes hinted?"

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"Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser, a longtime Slow Food USA insider who was prominently featured at the Labor Day weekend event, is already providing an example. At forum after forum at Slow Food Nation, Schlosser drove home a key point: The millions of people who work at vegetable farms, meatpacking plants, and restaurants -- the largest group of employees in the United States -- are ruthlessly exploited and need to be included in any meaningful sustainable-food movement. And he stacked his own Food for Thought session not with celebrated authors, but rather with labor-movement leaders.

I heard Schlosser say off-stage that his single-minded focus on labor made him feel like a "turd in a punchbowl" at Slow Food Nation. In reality, such use of cultural capital is a torch lighting a path toward a truly just and sustainable food system."

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