Collaborations

Slow Food partners with many institutions and organizations active in agriculture, livestock herding, animal welfare, environmental, social justice, climate, forestry, health, consumer, development, and fair trade to promote policies aimed at ensuring respect for the health and welfare of animals.

Together we work to promote small-scale producers, their raw milk products, their traditional practices, and the marginal environments where they often work.

At a global level:

• We have created a network together with Oldways Cheese Coalition (USA)  and the American Cheese Society (USA) that unites cheesemakers, affineurs, dairy production experts, and distributors to promote raw milk and traditional cheeses in the US and other countries.

At an European level:

• We collaborate with organizations like FACEnetwork to demand that European institutions adopt rules suitable for small-scale producers. These rules must take into consideration local production techniques, the production scale, and the market.
• We prepare studies and research based on an analysis of best practices within the Slow Food network to illustrate Slow Food’s position on the most relevant issues. Our publications include the studies Artisan Cheese Production – does hygiene policy help or hinder?, produced by Artisan Food Law, and the declaration “Local Food Matters!”
• We work with European institutions, particularly with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety on hygiene regulations and with the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development on quality and designations of origin, like PDOs.
• We draw on a network of experts and producers who are working around Europe to promote the Slow Cheese issues. We consult them on the writing of technical documents, involve them in our events and meet with them regularly in order to better understand the dairy world. Among others, Slow Food collaborates with Que Red (Spain), Associazione Casare e Casari, ONAF, and ANFOSC (Italy), Eldrimner (Sweden), Association Fromages de Terroir (France), and the Specialist Cheesemakers Association and the Raw Milk Producers Association (UK).