Carlo Petrini

Carlo Petrini was born on 22 June 1949 in Bra, a town in the province of Cuneo in Piedmont, north-west Italy. His father, Giuseppe, came from a family of railway workers, worked as an auto electrician and was a committed communist; The Guardian reported that he spent years in a Russian camp after the Second World War. His mother, Maria (nee Garombo), came from a farming background. Petrini grew up in Bra, the town that would remain his home and the headquarters of Slow Food for the rest of his life. Friends and colleagues knew him by the Piedmontese diminutive "Carlin".

Petrini attended a technical institute and later enrolled to study sociology at the University of Trento, one of the centres of Italy's student movement. He did not complete his degree. In later life he received honorary degrees, including from the University of New Hampshire and, in 2023, from the American University of Rome.

In the 1970s Petrini was active in the radical left in Bra. He opened a grocery shop, helped run the free radio station Radio Bra Onde Rosse and was elected to the town council for the PdUP (Partito di Unita Proletaria). From 1977 he wrote about food and wine for l'Unità and il manifesto and was involved, alongside Stefano Bonilli, in the Gambero Rosso food supplement. He was also close to the Club Tenco song festival. With friends including Silvio Barbero he founded the Libera e Benemerita Associazione degli Amici del Barolo, a convivial wine society that in 1986 became Arcigola, the food and wine branch associated with the ARCI cultural network.

In March 1986 McDonald's opened its first restaurant in Rome, close to the Spanish Steps. On 20 April 1986 Petrini and other activists protested in Piazza di Spagna by handing out bowls of pasta and declaring that they wanted slow food, not fast food. A Slow Food manifesto written by Folco Portinari was published in November 1987, and the international Slow Food movement was founded in Paris on 9 December 1989 with Petrini as president. The movement went on to launch the Osterie d'Italia guide (1990), the Salone del Gusto in Turin and the Ark of Taste (1996), the Cheese festival in Bra (1997), the Presidia programme (1999), the Terra Madre network of food communities (2004) and a project to plant gardens across Africa. In 2004 Petrini founded the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, near Bra. He led Slow Food until 2022, when he was succeeded as president by Edward Mukiibi of Uganda. By the time of his death Slow Food was active in more than 160 countries.

Petrini lived all his life in Bra and shared his home with his younger sister, Chiara, who survived him. Obituaries did not report a spouse or children. He was known for his warmth, humour and love of conviviality, and he formed friendships with figures ranging from Pope Francis to King Charles. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in his later years.

Petrini argued that food should be "good, clean and fair": pleasurable to eat, produced without harming the environment, and fair to the people who grow and make it. He saw gastronomy as inseparable from ecology, agriculture and social justice, and campaigned for biodiversity, small-scale farmers, food education in schools and local food cultures. He opposed genetically modified crops and industrial agriculture. Although raised in the communist left and a founding committee member of the Partito Democratico in 2007, he formed a close bond with Pope Francis, wrote the book Terrafutura with him and co-founded the Laudato Si' Communities with Bishop Domenico Pompili to promote the pope's message of integral ecology.

Petrini turned a local protest into a global movement and helped popularise ideas such as eating locally and seasonally, protecting traditional foods and valuing the work of small producers. The Ark of Taste and the Presidia catalogued and supported thousands of endangered foods, and Terra Madre connected food communities around the world. The University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, which he founded, has educated thousands of students from many countries. The idea of "slow" spread beyond food to movements such as Cittaslow, the network of slow cities. On his death President Sergio Mattarella said his advocacy had generated a new awareness of food culture and its production.

Petrini's honours included the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year award (2000), the Sicco Mansholt Prize (2002), recognition as a European hero by Time magazine (2004), a place on The Guardian's 2008 list of 50 people who could save the planet, an Ashoka fellowship, the UN Environment Programme's Champions of the Earth award (2013), appointment as the FAO's Special Ambassador for Zero Hunger in Europe (2016), and honorary degrees from the University of New Hampshire and the American University of Rome (2023).

Petrini wrote or co-wrote many books, including Slow Food: Le ragioni del gusto (published in English as Slow Food: The Case for Taste, 2003), Buono, pulito e giusto (2005; in English Slow Food Nation, 2007), Slow Food Revolution with Gigi Padovani (2006), Terra Madre (2009), Cibo e liberta (2013), Terrafutura, a dialogue with Pope Francis (2020), and A Taste for Change with the economist Gael Giraud (2023). He was a longtime columnist for La Stampa and la Repubblica.

Petrini's opposition to genetically modified organisms and his critique of industrial agriculture drew criticism from some scientists and agricultural commentators, who argued that biotechnology and intensive farming were needed to feed a growing population. Others criticised Slow Food in its early years as an elite movement focused on expensive food, a charge Petrini answered by putting fairness to producers and access to food at the centre of the movement's mission.

Petrini died at his home in Bra on the evening of 21 May 2026, aged 76, after a diagnosis of prostate cancer in recent years. Some reports, including Slow Food's statement and the Associated Press, gave the date as 22 May, the day the death was announced. Tributes came from President Sergio Mattarella, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, agriculture minister Francesco Lollobrigida and deputy prime minister Antonio Tajani, among many others. His body lay in state in the Sala Rossa of the Agenzia di Pollenzo, and a secular farewell was held in its courtyard on 24 May 2026, with addresses by the rector Nicola Perullo and the actor Moni Ovadia. His ashes were scattered by his sister Chiara in the garden of the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo.