SLOW FOOD “SALONE DEL GUSTO 2006”: PRESIDIOS AND STRONGER BONDS WITH “TERRA MADRE”. “IT’S POSSIBLE TO DEVELOP WITHOUT GROWING”

“We are now ten years from the first edition, and looking back at 1996 there was already an idea of this year’s edition. There was the defense of biodiversity and there was also the aim to indicate a path that pointed towards quality and small artisan production. Today, the Salone del Gusto has chosen (by sacrificing commercial exposition space) to favor Presidios and stronger bonds with Terra Madre, in order to demonstrate that it is possible to develop without growing”.
This was the statement that Roberto Burdese, the new president of Slow Food Italia, opened communications in order to present and explain the choices made and the novelties that will characterize the Salone del Gusto 2006 in Turin, October 26 to 30, a joint organization by the Piedmont Region, City of Turin, and Slow Food. Elda Tessore, Turin city councilor for tourism and promotion, noted “Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre together contribute to the promotion of Turin - increasing the vocation for tourism in our territory. The 2006 appointment will re-ignite the media intensity of the Olympics.
The city will be involved in organizing and promoting a festive climate; we would like re-propose the welcoming spirit from this past February, when Turin became the world capital of sports. Food, music, and sport are the common languages of the world. And Turin will now become the capital of taste”. Mercedes Bresso, President of the Piedmont Region, recently held a press conference to confirm the centrality of Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre: “over the years Salone del Gusto has surely grown in terms of quantity and quality and, together, the Piedmont Region has also grown.
This region has a vocation for the quality of its products which is written in our history and whose continued growth is a collective issue. At this stage we have reached, thanks to the involvement of many intelligent groups who have contributed to increasing the value of the local production of our territory, promoting its image, substance, and high quality. Terra Madre has thus become a philosophy, a way of being, a new way of thinking of production, of the economy. And, once again, the Salone del Gusto will give more quality to the Piedmont system, once again betting on the winning strength of local production”. Carlo Petrini, founder and symbol of Slow Food, happily announces the success of an idea that ten years ago was considered a utopia, but which has now been made a reality by a group of dreamers.
“Instead, time and events have given us the benefit of the doubt and have demonstrated that applying industrial production means in the food & agriculture sector is not the right and sustainable solution for the environment and society. This year, the Salone del Gusto, which will occur simultaneously with Terra Madre, will be the demonstration that quality is and must be accessible to all, not elitist or a niche. We wanted to involve the farming world so it fills with environmental sustainability, without which there is no future for our planet. It is a necessary alliance that must also enter into the education of future generations, for whom the lack of ties to the earth and the dynamics of the production of food signifies a dangerous loss of culture and health.
Terra Madre, this year, will regenerate the Salone del Gusto. The Terra Madre network, with the strength of its “virtuous” globalization, will help local production resist “bad” globalization of low quality goods and social injustice: the Salone del Gusto is the stage for this economy”.