Alice Waters

Alice Waters is the Vice President of Slow Food International it is an organization founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986. Slow Food International is an association that promotes food and wine culture, and also defends food and agricultural biodiversity worldwide. Slow Food Intl. has 83,000 members worldwide and offices in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, the USA, France, Japan, and Great Britain. They are one of the largest and most influential agriculturally conscious groups in the world. Their mission includes defense of biodiversity, which helps protects countless traditional cheeses, grains, vegetables, fruits, and animal breeds. Taste education which teaches people to make a conscious effort to explore, question, and experiment with food, and linking producers and consumers Slow Food Intl. host and sponsors many world renowned festivals and markets. Slow Food Intl. also organizes two key adult education projects: the Master of Food, a program of study in the wine and food area separated into 20 courses each with a different theme, and the University of Gastronomic Sciences, the world's first university of 'eco-gastronomy'.

Maybe one of the most important projects Slow Food Intl. has initiated is The Ark of Taste. It was founded to discover, track and defend small quality food products and defend biodiversity. The Presidia are organizational entities used to promote the products, guarantee their economic and commercial future and, protect the land from poverty and create new job opportunities for artisan food producers. Some of the products the Ark of Taste is trying to save range from the Italian Valchiavenna goat, the American Navajo-Churro sheep, the last indigenous Irish cattle breed, the Kerry, a unique variety of Greek fava beans grown only on the island of Santorini. All of these products are endangered and according to The Ark of Taste they all have real economic possibility and commercial potential.