Over the past few years, Chipotle has become a popular restaurant for people to enjoy $7 burritos and converse with friends and family. Chipotle attracts customers such as foodies and broke college students alike.
The restaurant pats itself on the back for delivering high-quality ingredients with plenty of nutrition that are grown locally on a farm near you, instead of meat from a factory laced with GMOs. However, despite their safe and sound approach to providing ingredients they have had outbreaks of E.coli and Norovirus. Earlier in October, there was an outbreak of E.coli mainly concentrated in the states of Oregon and Washington along with 52 other cases across nine states, all connected to Chipotle. USA TODAY reported on December 9, 2015 at Boston College, 140 students were infected by Norovirus after eating Chipotle. Norovirus is a collection of viruses that are caused by food poisoning and the stomach flu, so basically the worst of both worlds. For a company who’s tagline is “Food with Integrity”, they sure seem to be lacking it.
As a frequent customer of Chipotle, I was not shocked by the outbreak at first, as it seemed like a local problem for their restaurants in the Pacific Northwest. The issue gained my attention more when it spread to nine other states. Boston College was the final straw; with it being on the east coast, it felt close enough to hit home. My family and I always agreed on Chipotle when we could not agree on anywhere else. What surprised me even more was that this outbreak was just one of many to come out of Chipotle. The company has a long history of food poisoning spread out all over the country. All of these incidents dating back to 2008 were disclosed from the public. It took seven years and several once loyal customers to be sent to the hospital for the company to finally own up to their mistakes.
All these incidents raise the question of whether Chipotle’s business plan is safe enough to continue working and if traditionally raised meat is safe enough to eat. While the company production process is more ethical than most other chains, such as McDonalds, it’s still not safe enough to be guaranteed to work as proven by the several outbreaks that have happened so far. In order to make sure this will not happen again the company needs a representative to survey the livestock to see how they’re raised and if the conditions are clean and ethical.
This outbreak is another reason that people need to be aware of what is going on with their food. In this day and age, there is too much information out there for you to not to be informed about where you food comes from and what’s in it. It’s also the company’s responsibility to release this information to the consumer instead of hiding it to make themselves look good.