Perhaps no nation has as passionate a grass-roots movement to preserve endangered species of cheese and protect vegetable rights as does Italy.

Slow Food is a food and wine organization created 13 years ago by an Italian journalist, Carlo Petrini, as an antidote to fast food. More than 100,000 people were expected to attend Slow Food's Salone del Gusto, a five-day food fair that ends tonight.

Now with 40,000 members in 35 countries, Slow Food's manifesto warns against "obsessive worrying about hygienic matters" and pledges to preserve such endangered foods as Firiki apples from Greece and Sicilian lattume di tonno, sperm of male tuna.

Pub Date: 11/09/98