Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini has died

Carlo Petrini, the founder of the global Slow Food movement, died on 21 May at the age of 76 in his Piedmontese hometown of Bra. The Italian journalist and sociologist, who founded the organisation in 1986 as a counter-movement to fast-food culture, died following a serious battle with cancer. Over four decades, his philosophy of ‘good, clean and fair’ fundamentally transformed product awareness, even within the world’s top-tier gastronomy.

Carlo Petrini, born on 22 June 1949 in Bra, Italy, initially pursued a career as a restaurateur, journalist and regional politician after dropping out of his sociology studies. Throughout his life, his initiatives straddled the intersection of agriculture, economics and the political left. In 1986, he founded Arcigola (later Slow Food Italia) in his hometown. The movement’s international breakthrough came in December 1989 in Paris, when delegates from 20 countries signed the official Slow Food Manifesto. The movement was triggered by a media-effective protest, initiated by Petrini, against the opening of a McDonald’s branch on the Spanish Steps in Rome in 1986.

Under the motto “buono, pulito e giusto” (good, clean and fair), coined by Petrini, the organisation developed into a global network that now operates in over 160 countries. Petrini thus laid the theoretical foundations for key industry trends in fine dining over the past two decades. These include the preservation of biodiversity through the “Ark of Taste” project, which protects regionally typical livestock and plant species threatened with extinction worldwide, as well as the establishment of producer networks that have paved the way for the modern “farm-to-table” principle in haute cuisine. The University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, also founded by Petrini in 2004, introduced interdisciplinary studies on the sensory, ecological and economic aspects of food.

Petrini’s theories on “integral ecology” attracted attention far beyond the culinary sector. The US magazine Time named him a “Hero of Europe” in 2004, whilst The Guardian listed him among the world’s most significant environmentalists in 2008. This was followed by close collaborations with international institutions such as the United Nations, as well as an intensive intellectual exchange with Pope Francis and King Charles III. In 2022, Petrini initiated a strategic generational and structural change: after more than three decades at the helm, he handed over the office of international president to Edward Mukiibi.