Artisanal Food Production and Craft

Synonyms

Craft; Pickling; Preserving; Small batch; Traditional food preparation

Introduction

The word “artisanal” has regained a foothold in the US food vernacular and is being used to describe many food and beverage products like pickles, cheese, jam, and gin that have been populating the shelves of specialty shops and crowding tables at farmer’s markets since the start of the new millennium. Like so many similar monikers that have been adopted to connote a specific sense of values in production or quality, such as “natural” and “green,” the word is not regulated and has since been used by large corporations to describe industrial- or mass-produced goods such as crackers, potato chips, and pizza (Donnelly 2012). Thus a debate has ensued about the true meaning of the term and what, if anything, should be done to ensure its veracity.

The term “artisanal” has its roots in the Italian word “artigiano,” meaning artisan or craftsman, which has its own etymology from the Latin “artitus”...