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do not anticipate any kind of mapping of the existing foods. Slow Food’s Ark prod- ucts, on the other hand, are judged based on a stringent set of criteria, whose salient points include the small size of the productive unit, established ties to a local area and risk of extinction. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that so far “only” 700 Italian prod- ucts have joined Slow Food’s Ark, compared to the thousands on the ministerial list. But another decisive matter is at stake. To date, everyone who has studied or ex- plored this issue has started from a more or less explicit assumption: that this heri- tage represents a huge potential economic resource for our country. In other words, it could be our oil. We have heard this mantra repeated many times, the claim that Italy’s oil is represented by our immense artistic heritage and our typical foods. But it is a misleading slogan, conceptually misguided. I won’t go into a discussion of our cultural assets, but I believe that comparing our food heritage to oil suggests that it is an asset which can be tapped into in the same way as oil: just drill into the soil and the precious liquid will gush forth. This is not the case, not just in Italy, but in every country in the world. Traditional products are certainly an asset, and there are85