Chipotle Restaurants Support 'Food, Inc.' Film and Humane Farming

In Chicago's Chipotle loop location at 8 E. Madison, there is a "Food, Inc." DVD movie sign on the glass partition, and above the image, it says, "I hope that all our customers see this film. The more they know about where their food comes from, the more they will appreciate what we do." The quote was from Steve Ells, founder and co-CEO.

In the 2008 film "Food, Inc." directed by Robert Kenner, viewers find out what's in their fast food, how chicken and pork items are getting meatier, what are herbicide soybeans, the pros and cons of organic fruit and why farmers are timid around the four major beef companies (Tyson, Cargill, Swift & Co., and National Beef Packing). Viewers also find out what is Monsanto and why you need to know, why farmers are losing money and details how talk show host Oprah Winfrey narrowly escaped the wrath of slaughterhouse companies for her mad cow disease comment.

But Chipotle serves beef, chicken and pork in burritos and burrito bowls. So why would this 16-year-old restaurant franchise want to bring attention to "Food, Inc."? Source Writer Shamontiel spoke with Chris Arnold, Chipotle's Public Relations Director, about the company's decision to promote this film.

Shamontiel: I checked out a video after seeing the sign in downtown Chicago about how Chipotle is not supportive of factory farming. How long has this been going on?

Chris Arnold: We have been buying meat from animals that are raised in a humane way, never given hormones or antibiotics, and fed a pure vegetarian diet for about 10 years now. Chipotle has been doing this before "green" was particularly "in." And we do that more than any other restaurant in the world. This year, it will be more than 62 million pounds.

Shamontiel: Sixty-two million pounds of meat?

CA: Yes, from humanely raised animals.

S: Chipotle has been around for 16 years but using humane farming for 10 years. What made your company decide to go from slaughterhouses to humane farming?

CA: The decision was made when we were reworking the division for our carnitas, which are made of pork. At the time, the carnitas weren't selling as well as some of our other things and so we were looking at the recipes and ingredients. During that process, our founder Steve Ells-a classically trained chef-read an article in a little food e-newsletter called "The Art of Eating." And this article was about the farms of Niman Ranch that were raising pigs in a really traditional way in open pastures or in deeply embedded farms. Raised in a humane way. Never given hormones or antibiotics and fed a pure vegetarian diet, and Steve really liked that story. He went to visit Niman Ranch Farms, and on these farms he saw these happy pigs running around on open fields and actually living like pigs.

He also visited the normal industrial confinement farming operations, and he was appalled by what he saw. These pigs lived in just horrific conditions, breeding sows that spent much of their lives in cages so small they can't turn around. The environments are so pathogenetically polluted that they have to preventively feed copious amounts of antibiotics to keep them from getting sick. Steve decided he didn't want Chipotle's success to be tied to the kind of exploitation that he was seeing. That gave rise to a vision that we called food with integrity that has us looking for more sustainable sources for all the ingredients that we use, that includes all of our pork, all of our chicken, more than 60 percent of our beef and we're working on getting that other 35 or 40 percent. All of the dairy we use like cheese and sour cream is made with milk from cows that are not treated with the synthetic hormone, RBGH.

S: How did "Food, Inc." come in? Did Steve Ells just happen to see the movie and promote it?

CA: Steve saw the movie very early on, and we entered into a promotional partnership with them almost from the beginning. So we sponsored screenings of "Food, Inc." in thirty some locations. We showed the film to more than 9,000 people across the country.

S: Did Chipotle own McDonald's or did McDonald's own Chipotle?

CA: Neither. McDonald's, for a period of seven years, was our largest investor. They never owned us outright and we really ran as an independent, autonomous company. McDonald's has been completely divested for more than three years now. We have absolutely no connection to them.

S: If I remember the movie correctly, "Food, Inc." talked about how McDonald's is one of the leaders in buying factory farm items for their restaurants, correct?

CA: The traditional fast food industry has certainly been one of the drivers of the big industrial food model that we have but certainly not the only one. We think that that system has a lot of problems. It's bad for the environment. It's bad for the animals. It's bad for the people who raise the animals and grow the produce.

S: What do you say to the vegetarians or vegans who will say the animals might be raised in a more peaceful environment, but they're still being killed?

CA: That is in fact true, but we live in a society where the vast majority of people eat meat. If we conserve from animals that are raised in a more humane way, I think that's the right thing to do. If people choose to be vegetarians or vegans for dietary reasons or philosophical reasons, that's great, and we have a lot of vegetarian and vegan customers, but that's a small percentage of the population.

S: What was the name of the company Chipotle worked with for humane farming?

CA: In ["Food, Inc."], that would've been Polly Face Farms. Polly Face Farms is a farm we work with in the northeast...through a local produce program.

S: What other farms does Chipotle work with?

CA: Lots. We work with Niman Ranch quite a bit. We work with Coleman Natural Beef. We work with Bell & Evans, our largest natural chicken supplier. We work with a couple of dozen family produce farms all over the country. Our suppliers tend to be smaller and a more regional niche.

S: Do you think watching movies like "Food, Inc." will make people really be more concerned about the food they eat because you have a lot of people that say, "If I don't have to kill it, I don't care where it comes from"?

CA: I think ["Food, Inc."] is part of a broader movement. I think we are early on in a growing level of consciousness in this country about the food we eat. People are really only starting to pay attention to this more recently. Americans spend less money as a percentage of disposable income on food than anywhere else in the developed world. We've been conditioned to expect as much food as possible for as little money as possible, and until people are willing to pay the real price for food we're going to have a system that's dominated by these huge industrial suppliers.