Chipotle's Sustainability Hypocrisy Could Eclipse Its Food Poisoning Fiasco

Add Pennsylvania to the list of Chipotle poisoning outbreak states. Co-author: Andrew Porterfield The number of recent food poisoning cases linked to the fast-food restaurant soared this week to more than 500 with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announcing 6 additional cases in four more states: Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Kansas and Oklahoma. "For more than 15 years, we've been working hard to change the way people think about and eat fast food," Chipotle Co-CEO and founder Steve Ells told Fortune earlier this year. Well, Ells nailed that one. Most of the Salmonella, norovirus and E. coli outbreaks have no known source (although the Minnesota outbreaks from Salmonella came from tomatoes). The agency has said it could not determine which food is responsible for the outbreak because of Chipotle's food handling policies--which has startled CDC officials. "One of the challenges here has been that we have been able to identify the restaurants where people ate, but because of the way Chipotle does its record-keeping, we have been unable to figure out what food is in common across all those restaurants," Dr. Ian Williams, chief of the outbreak response and prevention branch of the CDC, told the New York Times. Food poisoning with integrity Chipotle's troubles have undermined its public claims that it uses safer and higher quality organic and local ingredients when available. Its chief financial officer John Hartung said during a recent call with analysts t...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news