Slow Food

“Slow food” is a term meant to counter “fast food.” The slow food movement was founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in the mid-1980s, after protests were made over the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Rome. “Slow food” had been trademarked from 1991, but “slow food” appears in print from at least 1975.
   
The slow food movement is about an alternative to mass-produced food as much as “fast” or “quickly cooked” food, with the movement’s emphasis on organics and locally grown foods.
   
   
Wikipedia: Slow Food
The Slow Food movement was founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy to combat fast food. It claims to preserve the cultural cuisine and the associated food plants and seeds, domestic animals, and farming within an ecoregion. It was the first established part of the broader Slow movement. The movement has since expanded globally to over 83,000 members in 122 countries.
 
Slow Food organization
Slow Food began in Italy with the foundation of its forerunner organization, Arcigola, in 1986 to resist the opening of a McDonalds near the Spanish steps in Rome. The Slow Food organization spawned by the movement has expanded to include over 83,000 members with chapters in over 122 countries. All totaled, 800 local convivia chapters exist. 360 convivia in Italy — to which the name condotta (singular) / condotte (plural) applies — are composed of 35,000 members, along with 450 other regional chapters around the world. The organizational structure is decentralized: each convivium has a leader who is responsible for promoting local artisans, local farmers, and local flavors through regional events such as Taste Workshops, wine tastings, and farmers’ markets.
 
Offices have been opened in Switzerland (1995), Germany (1998), New York City (2000), France (2003), Japan (2005), and most recently in the United Kingdom. The head offices are located in Bra, near the famous city of Turin, northern Italy. Numerous publications are put out by the organization, in several languages. In the US, the Snail is the quarterly of choice, while Slow Food puts out literature in several other European nations.
   
Slow Food International
Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.
 
Today, we have over 100,000 members in 132 countries.
     
Word Spy
slow food
n. An agricultural and gastronomic movement that emphasizes traditional, organic growing methods and the appreciation of fine food and wine. Also: Slow Food.
—n. Food grown and consumed in this way.
—slow-food adj. Relating to this movement.
Earliest Citation:
Traditionalists in Georgetown are fed up with the fast-food invasion and have gone to court in behalf of the rights of slow food. The Georgetown Citizens Association, whose members have winced for years as the handsome old cobbled neighborhood yielded to all manner of boutiquery and fast-food eatery, sued this week and charged that the area’s historic Market House by law should be used for the sale of fresh fish, meat, produce and other traditional marketplace items.
—Francis X. Clines and Phil Gailey, “Briefing,” The New York Times, December 25, 1981
Notes:
In 1986, Italian wine writer Carlo Petrini spied a new McDonald’s restaurant in Rome’s famous Piazza di Spagna and decided that enough was enough. He enlisted the help of some friends and they vowed to fight the encroachment of fast food by promoting its opposite: slow food.
(...)
Here’s the first media citation I could find for this movement:
   
Slow food is a philosophical and ecological movement as well as a gastronomic one. It has, despite its name, taken off like the cork in a bottle of bubbly. Speaking at a recent lunch at Manhattan’s Toscana restaurant, a snail-shaped pin (the symbol of the movement) sparkling on his lapel, Petrini explained the genesis of this latest culinary upheaval.
 
“Fast food is one of the most powerful and destructive components of our speeded up modern lives. It has standardized food from country to country, emphasized the beauty of what’s on the plate but not its safety, and is undoing thousands of years of gastronomic civilization. We must band together to stop it, but, of course,” he added with a broad wink, “we must stop it slowly, slowly.”
—“Food Watch,” Newsday, November 1, 1989
 
5 September 1975, Valley News (Van Nuys, CA), “Cafe Ramblings with Larry Lipson,” pg.  22A, col. 6:
Is Slow Food Better?
Leopoldo Guglielmo picked the site of what was La Malaguena on Sepulveda Blvd. in Mission Hills for his neat, little Italian restaurant Villa D’Este simply because, as he puts it, “I like Mission Hills.”
 
Being encircled by fast food giants Arby’s, McDonald’s and Bob’s doesn’t faze him.
   
New York (NY) Times
DE GUSTIBUS; A Faintly Amused Answer to Fast Food
By FLORENCE FABRICANT
Published: November 15, 1989
YOU can’t turn back the clock, but Carlo Petrini, an Italian intellectual and wine writer, favors unwinding, at least at the dinner table. He is organizing an international movement called Slow Food, in response to the instant gratification of McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and perhaps even the minute steak.
 
There is nothing leisurely in the attempt by the organizers to take on the world. The formation of Slow Food and the publication of its manifesto were announced Friday at simultaneous news conferences held by Mr. Petrini’s assistants in a number of cities, among them New York, San Francisco, Rome, Paris, Zurich, Brussels, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Vienna; Caracas, Venezuela, and Fez, Morocco.
(...)
The stated objective of Slow Food is to preserve worthy local gastronomic traditions that have been endangered by standardization and industrialization. Other points covered in the Slow Food manifesto are the need to recognize the value of slowness as an antidote to the frenzy of modern life, to distribute information about worthwhile products and restaurants around the world, to promote food production that respects ecology and nature, to promote the exchange of scholarly information about gastronomy and to defend the right to pleasure.
     
(Trademark)
Word Mark SLOW FOOD
Goods and Services (CANCELLED) IC 016. US 038. G & S: brochures, books and magazines pertaining to cooking and wines, table cloths made of paper. FIRST USE: 19871100. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19900209
(CANCELLED) IC 021. US 030. G & S: earthenware; namely, plates, drinking glasses and cups. FIRST USE: 19871100. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19900209
(CANCELLED) IC 024. US 042. G & S: table cloths not of paper. FIRST USE: 19871100. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19900209
(CANCELLED) IC 025. US 039. G & S: T-shirts, shirts. FIRST USE: 19871100. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19900209
Mark Drawing Code (3) DESIGN PLUS WORDS, LETTERS, AND/OR NUMBERS
Design Search Code 03.21.04 - Snails
03.21.24 - Stylized reptiles, frogs and snails
Serial Number 74160351
Filing Date April 22, 1991
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1A
Published for Opposition March 17, 1992
Registration Number 1691483
Registration Date June 9, 1992
Owner (REGISTRANT) Arcigola INC. ASSOCIATION ITALY Via Mendicita Istruita 14 12042 Bra, Province of Cuneo ITALY
Attorney of Record Laurence B. Bond
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator DEAD
Cancellation Date December 14, 1998
 
(Trademark)
Word Mark SLOW FOOD
Goods and Services IC 016. US 002 005 022 023 029 037 038 050. G & S: BOOKS IN THE FIELD OF CULTURE AND FOODSTUFF, PERIODICALS, NAMELY, NEWSPAPERS AND NEWSLETTERS IN THE FIELD OF CULTURE AND FOODSTUFF, MAGAZINES IN THE FIELD OF CULTURE AND FOODSTUFF, PRINTED MATTER, NAMELY NOTEBOOKS, DIARY, EXERCISE BOOKS. FIRST USE: 19900100. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19910100
IC 025. US 022 039. G & S: CLOTHING, NAMELY, SUITS, PANTS, SKIRTS, SHIRTS, T-SHIRTS, BLOUSES, JACKETS, COATS, OVERCOATS, DRESSES, HEADWEAR. FIRST USE: 19900100. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19910100
IC 035. US 100 101 102. G & S: PREPARING AND PLACING ADVERTISEMENTS FOR OTHERS; BUSINESS MANAGEMENT SERVICES IN THE FIELD OF CULTURE AND FOODSTUFF; ARRANGING AND CONDUCTING OF TRADE SHOW EXHIBITIONS IN THE FIELD OF CULTURE AND FOODSTUFF. FIRST USE: 19900100. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19910100
IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: EDUCATIONAL SERVICES, NAMELY, CONDUCTING SEMINARS AND WORKSHOPS IN THE FIELD OF CULTURE AND FOODSTUFF; ORGANIZING EXHIBITIONS FOR CULTURAL PURPOSES IN THE FIELD OF FOODSTUFF. FIRST USE: 19900100. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19910100
Mark Drawing Code (3) DESIGN PLUS WORDS, LETTERS, AND/OR NUMBERS
Design Search Code 03.21.04 - Snails
03.21.24 - Stylized reptiles, frogs and snails
Serial Number 75731568
Filing Date June 16, 1999
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1B
Published for Opposition February 6, 2001
Registration Number 2632216
Registration Date October 8, 2002
Owner (REGISTRANT) SLOW FOOD ARCIGOLA CORPORATION ITALY Via Mendicita Istruita, 14 12042 BRA (CN) Cod. Fisc. 91008360041 ITALY
(LAST LISTED OWNER) SLOW FOOD ITALIA CORPORATION ITALY VIA MENDICITA ISTRUITA, 14 12042 BRA (CN) COD. FISC. 91008360041 ITALY
Assignment Recorded ASSIGNMENT RECORDED
Attorney of Record Frank P. Presta
Disclaimer NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE “SLOW FOOD” APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN
Type of Mark TRADEMARK. SERVICE MARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Affidavit Text SECT 15. SECT 8 (6-YR).
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE