The best products at the best prices!

How Slow Food

achieves its goals

Ark of taste: The Ark of Taste aims to rediscover, catalogue, describe and publicize forgotten flavours. Its aim is to protect the small purveyors of fine food from the deluge of industrial standardization; to ensure the survival of endangered animal breeds, cheeses, cold cuts, edible herbs - both spontaneous and cultivated - cereals and fruit; to promulgate taste education; to make a stand against obsessive worrying about hygienic matters, which kills the specific character of many kinds of production; to protect the right to pleasure.

Presidia: If Ark products can have an economic impact, they can be saved from extinction. This is the simple reasoning behind the Presidia its there to promote artisan products; to stabilize production techniques; to establish stringent production standards and, above all, to guarantee a viable future for traditional foods. Through the Presidia the Slow Food Movement work for the defence of raw milk, the ban on GMOs, the promotion of animal husbandry that contributes to animal wellbeing and meat quality, sustainable fishing, and the safeguarding of traditional artisan hand working and aging techniques.

Two Irish Presidia have been set up to include Irish raw cow`s milk cheeses including Durrus, Desmond raw and Bellingham Blue. There is also a presidia of Irish smoked wild salmon including Sally Barnes at Woodcock Smokery and Frank Hederman at Belvelly smokehouse. For more information see www.slowfood.com