Chipotle: one of my favorite places to eat in high school. We used to go before football games to load up on a lot of food for not not a lot of money. The chips and guacamole... delicious! I've heard that it's a "Minnesota thing" to be obsessed with Chipotle, and my freshman year when I learned that Fargo only had a Qdoba, it would be an understatement to say that I was disappointed.
Fast forward a few years to fall of 2014, in the Memorial Union. There stands a Chipotle contact table in the main entryway by the Bookstore advertising the brand new location opening in Fargo, with information about open positions for hire, and of course a free bag of their amazing chips. I grabbed a bag of chips and headed to class. I sat down with my bag of chips, and immediately students were peppering me with questions about how could I possible like Chipotle, and did I even know anything about their company and what they stood for?!
I honestly didn't have any answers for them, and started to do some research for myself.
In 2013, Chipotle as a company decided to no longer serve "conventionally raised beef" due to concerns that farmers were not providing sufficient healthcare measures for their cattle, and therefore the beef was obviously (to Chipotle's eyes) full of hormone injections and antibiotics. The company's goal is to serve food with "integrity." To Chipotle, serving food with integrity means only local farmers, on small farms. This cuts out a HUGE portion of the United States agriculture industry, and farmers who own large farms, and who DO farm/raise livestock with integrity. To many farmers, this was a slap in the face from Chipotle, who ultimately did not, and still do not, understand the sickly implications of that decision. LOTS of questions are now being raised about that integrity due to multiple cases of food borne illness, including E.coli, that has spread through Chiptole locations around the country, which totals to about 600 stores. The Chipotle location near Boston College on the east coast this past December 2015 sent home nearly 30 students with food borne illness alone.
[read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/09/what-in-the-world-is-happening-to-chipotle/]
Another article states, "...the agriculture industry has argued that turning away from efficiency-boosting technology, like GMOs and synthetic hormones, will leave people hungry." [read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/chipotle-scarecrow-ad-integrity-agriculture-97763_Page2.html]
The video that Chipotle issued, called Scarecrow, is a 3-minute video which does not show an accurate view of agriculture, and portrays agriculture/farming and livestock production in a very negative way, such as the scene where the chicken is injected with hormones to make it larger. This video is very offensive to many hard-working American's who have a genuine passion, love, and understanding, and raising livestock with integrity, that Chipotle thinks they lack.
This is a deep issue, rooted in many emotions and to some this post may barely even scratch the surface of this hot topic. Learning more about what we eat, and where it comes from is extreme important. It is critical to not only eat good things, but to eat from good companies and sources, whereas for me now, Chipotle is not one of them.
Image Retrived: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipotle_Mexican_Grill
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