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Hundreds of artisan food producers, chefs, winemakers, writers, politicians and others with an interest in food gathered in Italy for the Slow Food Awards in Bologna and the Salone del Gusto, a vast international food and wine festival in nearby Turin, in October. Bologna, known as the "food capital" of Italy, was the perfect setting for attendees to give voice to local cooking styles and small food producers and of course, to eat.

The Slow Food Award is given to those who have done research, educational activities, or production in the field of food and drink. Five winners were selected from thirteen nominees by the 600-member International Jury, of which I was a member. Each juror could nominate candidates. My candidate was Turtle Creek Dairy in Loxahatchee, Florida. Jim and Sherry Berke raise pure-bred dairy goats and make cheese using the same methods as the small farms in France.  The five prize winners were of a more global nature: Russian Marija Girenko, for her research on indigenous plants; Nancy Jones of Mauritania, Africa who created a factory for the pasteurization and transformation of camel, cow and goat milk into cheese, milk, butter and yogurt; Mexican Raul Manuel who has taught the cultivation of vanilla to over 500 indigenous farmers, Veri Gulas of Turkey who worked for 30 years to preserve the endangered Hemsin bees and their precious honey; and Spaniard Jesus Garzon Heyde, whose work has restored animals and vegetal species that were almost extinct. They each received a $10,000 prize awarded by the city of Bologna.

Slow Food is the non-profit Italian-based organization dedicated to preserving the world's culinary heritage by avoiding mass-manufactured products and promoting food awareness. Slow Food burst into being in 1986 as a protest to McDonald's establishing its Italian first outpost in Rome's historic Piazza di Spagna. The prospect of the golden arches among the city's baroque facades was too much for Carolo Petrini, a journalist and gastronome from the Piedmont region of Italy. Petrini created Slow Food to safeguard traditional Italian foods, cooking methods and agricultural heritages, and to counter the invasion of American fast food.

Petrini and the poet Folco Portinari sat down and wrote the Slow Food Manifesto—committed to a way of life that relishes the slower sensual pleasures of the dinner table. It's no surprise that that the organization's symbol is the snail, a creature both slow and edible. Their mission is all about food and wine and its message is hard to argue with: Food should taste good. Wine, too. And foods and food preparations that have given culinary pleasure for decades (or much, much longer) should be treasured and preserved. The organization is credited with rediscovering many unique foods in Italy, such as San Marzano tomatoes and true Genovese foccacia.

Once considered an elitist outsider, Slow Food has become a mainstream organization with a membership of 60,000 (about half in Italy) in 42 countries, including the United States. Slow Food members participate in activities such as supporting small farmers and food purveyors of traditional fare, lectures, tastings, and dinners through some 500 local chapters, called convivia-a reference to the conviviality of the dinner table. Slow Food publishes a quarterly magazine in five languages, cookbooks and guides to food, restaurants and wine. They have just opened a lobbying office in Brussels, headquarters of the European Union, to battle a food bureaucracy wholes rules often crush small, artisan producers.

The biennial Salone del Gusto is the largest food and wine event in the world, with about 130,000 people taking part in the events. Held every other year in Turin, capital of Italy's wine-producing Piedmont region, the festival is a chance for producers to showcase their wares to an appreciative audience of restaurateurs, retailers and the general public. Slow Food Festivals are broad-reaching, not only acknowledging and encouraging individual artisans, but also celebrating the role of food throughout every aspect of culture. Attendees had the opportunity to participate in 420 events. There were 254 taste workshops, ranging from the art of the Umbrian pork butcher to Italian salami from a breed of Tuscan pig that's close to extinction.

A workshop was given by the legendary Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, who has been dubbed "the mother of modern American cuisine." "Eighty-five percent of cooking is shopping and finding the right ingredient. But it doesn't begin in the marketplace, it begins in the ground with the farmer choosing to grow a specific fruit or vegetables, then the ground nourishing it, and the farmer choosing the right moment to pick it and take it to the market," she explained.

Slow Food has developed into a cause that mirrors attitudes of many of the world's leading chefs as it seriously addresses contemporary problems in the food chain such as everyday quality foods that fall by the wayside to make room for products that have a longer shelf life, or look better than they taste or make more money faster. Slow Food also seems to have a flair for giving people a good time. I tasted my way through the Great Theme Halls (called "great halls of pleasure") of cheese, meat and desserts with 500 market stalls and some 3,000 international wines to taste. More than 50 countries showcased their artisinal products—Italy, U.S.A., New Zealand, China, Venezuela, Israel and Chile, to name a few. Slow Food U.S.A. presented a wealth of American foods and culinary traditions ranging from American artisanal breweries, and new world cheeses to Thanksgiving Day and all the best from the Southwest.

The pure intense flavors of heirloom tomatoes and apples, rare raw-milk cheeses, and unfiltered olive oil are unforgettable. The Slow Food international movement has U.S. chapters in Seattle, San Francisco, Omaha, St. Louis, New York Durham, and Sonoma. Membership is growing by about 300 members a month according to Patrick Martins, the director of Slow Food USA .Martins is on a mission to promote and build the international organization. The Ark of Taste project is an important aspect of Slow Food. It was introduced to identify and publicize foods endangered by a globalizing economic world of mass-produced foods and to encourage people to seek them out, with the theory that if the market demands, supply will increase. In speaking about the Ark of Taste, which intends to do for edibles what Noah did for animals, Martin says, "So much is being lost so quickly. It's becoming hard to remember tomatoes that tasted like tomatoes. You really have to start educating people to recognize products of quality." Among the American products included in the Ark of Taste is farmhouse cheddar cheese, green mountain potatoes, Coach Farm goat cheese, White Oak Cider, and Blenheim apricots.

Among the visitors to the Salone are dozens of schoolchildren, being motivated into an early appreciation of good food. Free samples of chocolate help, too. Slow Foods plans to expand its taste-education programs in public schools and has developed an instructional book of tasting for children. "We want kids to be able to distinguish between artisanal foods and industrial foods, and maybe develop a palate," Martins continues. Other programs include the Presida (a Slow Food program that attempts to ensure the survival of foods in the Ark through direct economic intervention); a publishing house (for cookbooks, travel guides, the Slow Food magazine and newsletter) charitable programs directed at food emergencies; and international conferences. For information about the International Slow Food Movement, including how to join or how to start a convivium, call 212-988-5146 or visit the Slow Food website.

Images by Carole Kotkin

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