Carlo Petrini, founder of the Slow Food movement, established the international university in 2004 to train students for employment in food and tourism industries, food-related government departments, or food-related journalism. UNISG is the only slow-food university in the world. The school's mission, according to its web site, includes projects that protect biodiversity and build an organic relationship among gastronomy, biological, agricultural and food/nutritional sciences, and social sciences and humanities. It mirrors the mission of the Slow Food movement—which asserts that an understanding of food involves economics, environmental science, history, biology, and anthropology, as well as aesthetics—and is true to the movement's core principles of "good, clean, and fair".