Slow Food USA National Congress

Posted by Ed Yowell, FSNYC Governing Board Member, Slow Food NY/NJ Regional Governor, and Slow Food NYC Leadership Committee Member
Preceding Slow Food Nation, hundreds of Slow Food USA local chapter leaders, regional governors, board members, and staff along with Slow Food International representatives, including Carlo Petrini, convened in the third Slow Food USA National Congress. At the congress, Josh Viertel, of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, was introduced as the incoming President of Slow Food USA and Erika Lesser, Slow Food USA Executive Director, presented a new strategic vision and a new National Statute, both developed with the contribution of local chapter leaders around the nation. The newly adopted statute and strategic vision re-dedicate Slow Food USA to the campaign for a good, clean, and fair food system, with new emphasis on approachability, inclusiveness, cooperation with other national and local good food activist organizations, broad-based education, and action.

With the conclusion of the 2008 congress, Slow Food USA is poised to become perhaps the largest, membership-based, good food advocate in the nation, with power in numbers to help change the way our nation feeds itself and impacts the world’s food system. The first, post-congress act of Slow Food USA was to lend support to the “Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture” drafted by a committee including Dan Imhoff, Wendell Berry, and Michael Pollan and endorsed by, among others, FSNYC’s own Hilary Baum.