AUSTRALIA'S laws against the use of raw, unpasteurised raw milk are, in the eyes of Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini, symbolic of much that is wrong with modern food systems.
Signor Petrini last week began his fourth visit to Australia in Western Australia, where, in common with the rest of the country, the use of raw, unpasteurised milk for any purpose except pet milk has been banned.
Through an interpreter, Signor Petrini related how for a lunch with the WA Minister for Agriculture, Terry Redman, he was carefully served three superb cheeses—all made from raw milk, and all French.
“Basically you are convinced that French bacteria are better than Australian ones. Stupiditá!”
“Pasteurising milk is like killing it. You can’t make different types of cheese. You can’t tell the difference in the cows, the pastures, the farming land. In pasteurised milk, the taste is standardised—it would be like pasteurising wine.”
It’s an apparently minor issue for the nation’s food supply, but in Signor Petrini’s view an important one for the health of farming and our relationship with food.
He said that in the US, when a campaign to allow cheesemakers to use raw milk was finally won, the number of artisan cheesemakers exploded because a point of difference could be established against the major cheese producers.
A similar story occurred with US beer brewing.
“When we started there were just two main beers. Now there are also 4000 microbreweries,” he said.
“This is the difference; this is the new economy. Against the massive and standardised economy of the food industry, we want local economies that stand for creativity.”
The Slow Food movement has been charged with being elitist, enabling little more than a cosy communion between a few specialist farmers and a cashed-up yuppie clientele. That’s not what Signor Petrini wants of the movement, and he vigorously rejects the charge.
He says he wants to give dignity back to “food culture”—and not the food culture of TV chefs and “recipes, recipes, recipes”.
Slow Food gave impetus to the opening of the first two farmers markets in the US 20 years ago. By the mid-1990s there were 400, and now there are about 12,000, all offering farmers an alternative outlet for their produce.
Outrage at McDonalds’s plans to build one of its fast food restaurants in the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, the heart of the capital of a nation of food lovers, impelled journalist Carlo Petrini to found the international Slow Food movement in 1989.
Slow Food is all about what Signor Petrini believes fast food is not. The movement encourages sustainable small-scale farming, local economies built on communities of farmers and consumers (or “co-producers”), an emphasis on food quality, provenance and taste, and extended convivial eating.
The Slow Food event Terra Madre, held in Italy every two years, gathers small farmers and their supporters from across the world to discuss the formation of “food communities”.
The last Terra Madre, held in 2008, attracted more than 4000 farmers, fishermen and artisan food producers among the 6300 delegates.
* Slow Food Australia is mounting a campaign to have raw milk used in cheesemaking. For more information visit the Slow Food website.
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