Partnerships
Slow Food collaborates with a range of civil society organizations working on this theme:
European Beekeeping Coordination (BeeLife): As early as 2013, BeeLife had formed an international alliance with 45 beekeeping and farming organizations, research institutes, and environmental and civil rights organizations. Slow Food is part of this alliance to save bees and farmers. One of the alliance’s first actions, in 2013, was to nominate the pesticide-producing corporations Bayer, BASF, and Syngenta for the dreaded Public Eye Award, a Greenpeace International and Public Eye (formerly Berne Declaration) initiative that denounces irresponsible commercial practices.
COLOSS (Prevention of honey bee COlony LOSSes) is an international non-profit association that involves more than 1,000 researches, veterinarians, and agronomists from 95 countries and works to improve the wellbeing of honey bees at a global level.
The purpose of the collaboration between COLOSS and Slow Food is to develop, promote, and strengthen joint actions and projects to raise awareness and influence public opinion about the dramatic decline of pollinator populations around the world; to improve pollinator wellbeing; to guarantee people access to food through sustainable agricultural practices that respect pollinators; and to provide information and appropriate advice to interested stakeholders, including policymakers.
Collaborations in Italy:
AMI: Ambasciatrici e Ambasciatori dei mieli (“Italian honey ambassadors”) is a cultural association whose objective is to support and spread the culture of beekeeping, honey, and other bee products. Slow Food collaborates with AMI on activities related to the sensory analysis of honey (e.g. the “honey bar”) during events, and AMI provides important technical support for Slow Food Presidia through training activities on sensory analysis and the characterization of monofloral honeys.
Osservatorio Nazionale Miele: The “National honey observatory” is an Italian organization that supports beekeeping and related activities at national and regional levels, monitoring production, quality, and the general market for honey. Each year, the Observatory organizes the Tre gocce d’oro (“Three drops of gold”) competition to recognize the best Italian honeys. The competition includes a special category for Slow Food Presidium honeys.