News Archive

01/28/2013

Black Market...Cheese

Brazil's rich heritage of artisanal cheese production is going underground in response to severe production laws. To protect its future, Slow Food in Brazil has formed a working group...   In Brazil, illegal markets aren't confined to the usual suspects like guns, drugs or contraband. There is also a sizeable black...

01/14/2013

Contaminated Cheeses: We Need to Start Asking the Right Questions

The spectrum of Listeria monocytogenes, one of the most dangerous food contaminants, is back..   The French health authorities are currently recalling a number of products made by the Fromagerie de Jussac, mostly from French supermarket chains, because they may have been contaminated by Listeria monocytogenes.   Among...

01/10/2013

Eastward Ho!

"Not all the people of the Mediterranean manage to become Mediterraneans," wrote Predrag Matvejevic in Mediterranean Breviary. His is a vaguely oracular judgment, very much in the style of this Croatian intellectual. If you think of the perception of the Balkan countries we still have in the West, his sentence seems...

12/31/2012

Mutiny on the Dairy

1989 was a bleak year for Stilton. The illustrious English blue-veined cheese was accused as the culprit of a food poisoning scare that sickened several people whose Christmas tables it had graced. Fears that pathogens lurking in the raw-milk cheese were to blame triggered a knee-jerk decision that from then on, all...

06/20/2012

Celebrating a Presidium in the Carpathians

  Branza de Burduf cheese, a Slow Food Presidium, was the focus of a day of festivities in Romania Speaking on the phone from Romania, Marian Popoiu's voice is full of enthusiasm. Peace and quiet has returned to the Ferma Bucegi dairy, in the Carpathian Mountains, following an event that brought together around 30...

10/27/2011

Canadian Dairy Farmer Schmidt Strikes to Defend Raw Milk

For nearly a month now, Canadian rancher Michael Schmidt has been engaged in a hunger strike.   This is only the last chapter of a story that starts over 17 years ago, when Schmidt started crusading for the right to distribute raw milk to a few hundred Ontario consumers who own shares in his herd of cows. In early...

10/24/2011

Micheal Pollan on Raw Milk

The New York Times has recently published an issue of its Magazine all dedicated to food and dining. In one section of this Food Issue, the famous food writer and book author Micheal Pollan answered NYT readers' questions about current food topics and issues. One of the questions addressed the thorny issue of raw milk...

09/22/2011

The Battle for Raw Milk

Slow Food has been fighting for the rights of consumers to buy raw milk and the rights of cheesemakers to make cheese from raw milk for almost two decades, and its biennial event, Cheese, has long been a forum for publicizing the issue.   This year Cheese 2011 sees the launch of the campaign site for raw milk. As part...

09/21/2011

The Big Cheese

As Cheese 2011 came to a close yesterday, organizers were taking a moment to take stock. The biennial event that brings Slow Food's network of artisan dairy producers, cheese mongers, herders and experts to the streets of Bra - a historic cheese aging center for northwestern Italy and home to the association's...

09/19/2011

The Goat Brigades

“No, we do not have any cheese for sale I’m sorry,” apologizes Macedonian cheesemaker Aleksandar Dimovski to crowds of people flocking around to try his two Slow Food Presidium cheeses at Cheese, the four-day Slow Food event ending today in Bra, Italy. “We could not bring very many cheese rounds as Macedonia is...

09/17/2011

Labels That Tell a Story

How do you communicate food quality? "The concept of quality doesn't mean anything any more, it's become an empty, abstract word," claims Piero Sardo, president of the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity. He was speaking at a public meeting held today at Cheese 2011 to discuss Slow Food's vision for food...

09/16/2011

Cheese Heroes Take the Stage

Under blue skies and with the air filled with the aromas of formaggio, the eighth edition of Cheese was inaugurated today in a central piazza of Bra, Slow Food's birthplace in northern Italy. Taking a break from their stands filling the surrounding streets, artisan cheesemakers, herders, cheesemongers and affineurs...

09/14/2011

Cheese kicks off this Friday!

The eigth edition of Cheese will be inaugurated in Bra, Piedmont, Italy, on Friday the September 16. A jam-packed program awaits Cheese visitors in this four-day fair which will unwind in the streets of the town's historic city centre. Here is a list of the most interesting international events for the foreign...

08/18/2011

Raw Milk Raid: An Attack on Food Freedom?

August 3 was a telling day for food freedom in America, but the events were framed in terms of food safety. In Venice, California, the Rawesome raw food club was raided by armed federal and county agents who arrested a club volunteer and seized computers, files, cash, and $70,000 worth of perishable produce. James...

07/28/2011

The Forest Metaphor

President of the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity Piero Sardo tells the story of raw milk through an interesting metaphor... Often ordinary consumers struggle to understand the importance of making cheese from raw milk, milk that hasn't been treated by heating it to high temperatures. One way to explain this...