Chipotle and Non-CAFO Meats
Chipotle burrito photo by Michelle
I was in Edmond, OK this past week visiting my parents and in-laws for the 4th of July. While I was here my mom turned on the nightly news and we happened to see a clip on Chipotle. I just caught the very end of it and then my mom said, “oh you might be interested in that, it was about how Chipotle is getting their meat from ‘happy pigs’ and they get some of it from some famous farmer… I think they said Joel Salatin was his name?”
You might remember, Jeremy read a book by Joel Salatin called You Can Farm, and wrote a review on it recently, and he is the owner of PolyFace Farm which is the subject of one of the three parts in Omnivore’s Dilemma. I got online to look up what the report was about, and apparently Chipotle uses only non-CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) meat for it’s pork and chicken. It’s beef is about 50% non-CAFO, but they are working on increasing that to 100%. The other interesting thing is that they are trying to get their meat from local farmers. So, Joel Salatin supplies pork to the Chipotles in the Charlottesville, NC area, but they have other similar farmers supplying chicken and pork to restaurants in your area.
Chipotle started in Denver by a chef, Steve Ells, who had graduated from culinary school and was using his burritos to make money until he could open a real restaurant. In 2001 Chipotle started moving away from non-CAFO meats as much as they could, but didn’t publicize it until they had a model in place so they knew they could make it work for their restaurants.
Jeremy and I have been trying as best we can, to only eat meat if it is local and non-CAFO, which makes it hard to eat fast food. Our only options up until now have been to find something vegetarian on the menu, so we are very excited that we can now feel good about eating pork or chicken from Chipotle.
This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 11:37 am and is filed under Eating Local. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Hmm, that is interesting about Chipotle. I have only been eating local meat as well, but I don't know how I feel about Chipotle meat. Maybe I will wait til they bump it up to 100%. Also, did you know that Chipotle is now owned by McDonalds? So I'm conflicted on this quite a bit. In some ways, I hope they are pushing McD's to examine their meat purchasing, and if you read Fast Food Nation, he talks about how McD's can seem evil, but if they can be convinced to change their stand on something, they can effectively change the market completely. They are such a huge beef buyer, if they said "we will only buy beef that is BSE-free" then it would force the nations farmers to make sure they were in compliance, or risk going out of business. So hopefully big chains like Chipotle are also forcing the market somewhat and maybe there is some hope for McDonalds, but maybe that is wishful thinking.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Actually they were mostly funded by McDonald's until 2006 but have since parted ways. And I agree, I am sure Chipotle isn't close to the % of meat buying that McDonald's is but I'm glad they are taking steps to be local and non-feedlot. I would have been more skeptical, but the fact that they are buying Joel Salatin's meats, who is partially responsible for starting this movement, makes me believe more that they are actually buying non-feed lot meat, not just the kind that has a door in the back that the pigs never leave and calling it free range. Hopefully by supporting them, more big food chains will move towards things like this too.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
For years Chipotle has been trying to provide hormone free meat and buy ingredients (such as beans and meat) from local farmers. I once saw a graph at one restaurant showing what percent of their beans were purchased from local farmers and how the goal was to reach 100%, they just needed more local farmers to grow the beans to meet their demands. And I am pretty sure I saw this graph during the McDonalds years. I wouldn't get too down on them for once being associated with McDonalds or for not (yet) being at 100% local and hormone free meat. For a HUGE national fast food company they are doing great. And keep in mind that for Chipotle buying local is not a gimmick or marketing/advertisement ploy, they have been doing this for years with minimal advertisement.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Thanks for the comment Kelly, that is really interesting. You are right too, according to what I read they started this in 2001, that was long before it was the "in" thing to eat local, and I have been there many times over the years but never saw it advertised or realized they were doing this. And even during the McDonald's years according to what I read they were pretty much operating independently anyway. Probably the reason they are letting people know now is because they are finally at a point where most of their meats are 100% non-CAFO, the only one that is not so far is the beef, but I would guess in Colorado since there are so many free range beef farmers that even that may be there. Jeremy and I actually went there last night and I noticed that they had changed their menu to say their meat was all natural and naturally raised or something.
July 11th, 2009 at 2:58 am
That is really interested and cool that they've been working on this for so long even without advertising it. I've noticed the signs about using natural meat without growth hormones for a long time, but never saw any notice about the use of local supplies. Maybe this a good harbinger of things to come for more restaurant chain (and I like that it reinforces my love of Chipotle!).
July 13th, 2009 at 2:49 am
I really hope more restaurants follow their lead too, and also love that it reinforce my love of Chipotle as well! We had kind of stopped eating it for a while because we weren't eating as much meat, but now i'm really excited to go back there again.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:59 am
Rather interesting. Has few times re-read for this purpose to remember. Thanks for interesting article. Waiting for trackback
July 20th, 2009 at 6:16 am
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