I think it's really silly to make this about organic or sustainable ingredients. It's a simple matter of food safety, handling & cooking food correctly. All the talk about "smugness" smacks of ressentiment. Not a good look.
But it's only pointing out that Chipotle makes a bit deal about its ingredients and how they are good for you --which is well and good, but they overlook the food safety side while stressing the benefits of their ingredients which they market as being superior....
So, perhaps they use superior ingredients but it's immaterial if at the end of the day their food safety suffers. Additionally, it points out that on a good day, local (within 350 miles) supplies only account for 10% of their ingredients and they tend not to advertise the fact that they use the same supply chain economies of scale whereby their beans, meats and salsas are prepared by third parties then shipped to restaurants.
There are legitimate health risks associated with shunning modern technology in favor of organic food:
>"Contrary to popular wisdom, organic produce is not pesticide-free. Instead, it’s grown with primitive pesticides that can be significantly more hazardous to humans and to the environment. Organic agriculture also lacks the benefits of the many crops genetically improved with modern molecular techniques, like Bt-corn, which reduces the population of insects that allow toxic molds to infest corn. (Organic corn has higher levels of the toxins produced by these molds.)"
>"Chipotle rejects modern synthetic fertilizers in favor of suppliers who use manure on their crops. This approach may be “all natural” and “organic” and make some customers feel warm and fuzzy, but it should not come as a surprise that applying stool, feces and excrement to growing fruits and vegetables significantly raises the risk of spreading disease. Bruce M. Chassy, food science professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana scoured U.S. Food and Drug Administration data to conclude that organic food is four to eight times more likely to be recalled over safety concerns than conventionally grown products."
Right. Modern agriculture wasn't invented because people were bored or stupid, it was because pre-modern agriculture made lots of people either sick or malnourished.
It's more about preparing fresh food at scale. It's really hard to handle large amounts of raw veggies (cilantro, lettuce, and tomatoes). If these get contaminated in the field, a restaurant kitchen can't clean them well enough.
Restaurants that process their ingredients in a central kitchen can put ingredients through more aggressive sanitation treatments, and deliver them to stores pre-processed. But, that doesn't come across as particularly fresh or local.
They pushed me over the edge with their entirely anti-science (and hypocritical given they still sell soda) stance on GMOs. You don't get to parade around a slogan like "Food With Integrity" and fail as hard as they have.
The anti-gmo thing is a stupid fad. Unfortunately, they have to follow it until people either get educated about the issue or blindly follow the next food fad. Most likely the latter.
That said, the food IS more wholesome. As long as it stays that way, I will take my chances.
Opposing roundup ready strains (and the like), because it causes super bugs?
Or objections to treating life as IP, because it enables rent seeking, enabling mega corps to further put the squeeze on independent, indigenous farmers?
Farmers whose crops get contaminated by GMO strains, forcing Big Ag to sue them into oblivion, should have done a better job controlling the weather and pollinators?
Maybe you think butterflys are a nuisance and the people that like them are nuts?
In fact, at one point the article states "Because restaurants from Oregon to New York served contaminated food, the problem most likely originated with one of Chipotle’s big suppliers, not one of the local farms."
That stat being buried in the article felt like poor journalism to me. Chipotle is a really popular restaurant, and the article states that 500 people got sick there since July out of (presumably) 24 million total food illnesses during that same period. So maybe nothing unusual is going on?
The impression you got is, well, somewhat distorted. While 48 million are estimated to get sick from foodborne diseases annually, only 128,000 are hospitalized [0]; while the ratio between 513 sick in the Chipotle outbreaks to the 48 million annual sick from food borne diseases is miniscule (on the order of 1 in 100,000), the ratio between even the 20 hospitalized (of 53 sick) in the E. coli outbreaks in the whole set of Chipotle outbreaks to the 128,000 hospitalized annually from foodborne diseases is (while still small, by itself) a lot bigger than the ratio of the Chipotle-sick to the annual total sick (1 in 6,000 instead of 1 in 100,000).
(Also, the annual total sick-from-foodborne-illness count is an estimate, the sick-from-the-Chipotle-outbreak count is confirmed.)
Organic food is overall a net negative for the environment. Due to higher crop loss, more land is used for agriculture, even when taking fertilizer-related energy use into account. Many pesticides target genes only found in the disease vector (easy to establish this via genomics) and have no impact on humans.
No. 25% lower yields are a small price compared to traditional pestcides. From increased cancer rates, dead pollinators, heavy metals and hormone disrupting chemicals we cannot even begin to quantify the cost of heavy pestcide use.
GMOs aren't totally the answer either. There are no proper FDA guidelines on cross-kingdom gene transfers (ie, corn with squid genes in it).
Accelerated breeding programs to, for example, use genes from one Nightshade in another, and then use a standard hybridization process to further select desirable traits without harming the viability of the plant (which, for futher example, many tomato and pepper breeds are simply shitty plants that require a lot of trellising and other tender loving care to produce a useful yield) is the better solution.
Also, another very useful solution that small time farmers deploy is using predator species (bugs, nematodes, other things that eat or otherwise stop harmful bugs), or planting companion crops, such as basil and onions and garlic alongside tomatoes and peppers to deter common pests.
What are you talking about? I posted this fairly late after reading through the comments. It was upvoted all the way to the top. I'd say that's pretty substantiated.
Snark, indignation, and drama always get upvoted. That is a bug in human nature, not evidence of comment quality. HN is a site that tries to care about quality and thus is not driven solely by upvotes. Think of it as a constitutional democracy.
I said your comment was unsubstantive (not 'unsubstantiated') because it didn't contain any information, just a snarky putdown of hypothetical other users. Such a comment is merely a status move and those are always uninteresting, despite their popularity.
Surprised irradiation wasn't mentioned in the article. Irradiating food can give you the best of both worlds: retain the quality of raw food with none of the u-organisms. They could keep a slab of Cobalt-60 in the back of every restaurant!
> The sensitivity of vitamins to radiation is unpredictable and food vitamin losses during the irradiation are often substantial. [0]
> Using a Co60 source, repeated irradiation of survivors of bacterial cultures at a level initially destroying a high proportion of cells gave rise to strains which were more resistant to irradiation than the original cultures.[1]
> Fecal coliform concentrations higher than 10(2) CFU/g (Brazilian standard) were found in 97 (73%) of the samples, and Salmonella was detected in 4 (3%) of the samples.[2]
I linked to three studies cited by more than 50 other studies, each. How about taking a look at them? If their information matches with Mercola's account and you support these studies approaches, the researchers, or both, then you can kindly take back your self-proven, inaccurate attack... Those who attack messengers, receive only messages they like, if any.
I'm just glad we have a safe fast food burrito option which follows conventional agriculture practices with its food supply.
Let's hope this trendy organic thing stays isolated to Chipotle. A world where Taco Bell causes anyone needless gastrointestinal distress is not a world I want to live in!
I don't blame you. There's really no telling based on the information available whether Chipotle is particularly good or bad about safety. And they still have considerable altitude to fall before they're as bad as Taco Bell.
Actually, McDonald's caused a small typhoid outbreak in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, about thirty years ago. An employee who prepared salads was a carrier for typhoid, contracted in her(?) native country.
This five day delay jumped out at me, as did the fact it was mentioned without note or elaboration. This delay would not be normal here in the UK. Should it be read as bravado or fear of invoices?
Well, yes, it probably would be normal for many people to not see a doctor. That's why there's been extensive campaigns on, for example, "Be Clear on Cancer" asking people who see blood in their stool to talk to a doctor.
I hear a strict, nine-month regimen of acupuncture and veganism can work wonders for your health... especially if you are trying to beat pancreatic cancer.
A previous big "natural" and "organic" company which had a major food poisoning problem was Odwalla. Their slogan: "Killer Juice". That backfired big-time. Sales dropped 90%.[1] Eventually they sold out to Coca-Cola, and are now a minor brand there.
I'm just spitballing here, but I wonder how much of this food-borne illness is a function of a person's environment.
I grew up on a farm in Central Texas. We fertilized our vegetables fields with sheep manure. From our sheep.
I drank raw milk from a dairy down the road, pre-pasturization. It was wonderful stuff. The cream would rise to the top, and my mom would skim some of it off for coffee, but often we would just shake it up and drink it.
Until I moved to NYC last June, I still spent a lot of time on that farm with my family, eating vegetables and fruits fertilized by feces, eating sheep and chickens that I slaughtered myself, eating eggs right from the chickens with the detritus of chicken vag still on them. (yeah, you would rinse the eggs a little, but probably not enough to get rid of anything serious. The rinsing was purely cosmetic.)
My family runs a situation that I wouldn't call either organic, nor safe by any standards. They call it mutually beneficial.
The sheep eat the grass, then the sheep poop on the garden, the garden grows and is healthy. The chickens wander around the garden and eat the bugs that tend to eat the produce. The chickens also poop on the garden.
The chickens lay eggs that we mostly eat, and the ones we don't turn into more chickens. Sometimes we eat the chickens; sometimes we eat the sheep. Sometimes the eggs don't hatch, and we shoot them for target practice.
Anyway, my point is this: Not a single one of us has ever gotten sick from this scenario. I'm not suggesting that it's scalable or sustainable at all. Just that it hasn't been a problem for us.
I think it's interesting to note that a lot of people who go to my parent's farm from places like L.A. or Chicago or NYC do, in fact have digestive problems. I'll be curious to find out after a year or two in NYC if I have problems when I go home.
It isn't unreasonable for multiple things to be going on here.
There's an idea that because the vast majority of people live in urban areas and are not biologically equipped to handle natural food doesn't mean that really natural food is bad.
It might just mean that our bodies' adapt over time.
On the other hand, I get the point that the way of doing things that my family does is definitely not sustainable. Hell, we spend as much or more buying feed for the animals as we would just buying the stuff we eat there.
And that's using 43 acres for 30-something head of sheep and maybe 25 hens. And only maybe 20 acres for vegetables.
That's not even enough for a family of 5.
Though, I have to say, as proud as I am to be a part of Brooklyn, I'm probably a little more proud of my 96-year-old dad for managing that farm and taking care of all of it every day.
It's a bit shocking people would find it natural to bleed for several days before seeking medical help. On any country with universal healthcare this would be much less consequential, as the patient would be readily treated and the consequences would be largely diminished.
Well, someone always has to pay for healthcare - just that in some places (such as here in the UK) we mostly pay for it out of general taxation and it is "free at the point of delivery".
>> The CDC says Chipotle has been very cooperative in the E. coli investigation, but that the company is having trouble telling the agency which batches of ingredients went to which stores at which times. “The system they have is not able to solve the problem we have at hand. It’s not granular enough,” says Ian Williams, chief of the CDC’s outbreak response and prevention branch. He notes that “traceability from the farm to the point of service” should be improved throughout the food industry. In recent years, the agency has been able to find the contaminated ingredients in fewer than half of all multistate outbreaks.
To me this suggests a very simple solution. Legislate that each ingredient parcel must come with an audit trail. Assign to each parcel a reference number - a UUID or hash - that can be used to trace back its entire life and history. The solution seems so obvious that there are probably significant obstacles against doing so that I am not aware of. If such a system is implemented, then the next time a contamination breaks out, the source can be quickly identified and eliminated, then apologies can be made, and business can resume as normal.
>> The spread of norovirus in Simi Valley and Boston was caused by breaches of protocol, Ells says
Eliminating contamination entirely is a highly desirable goal, but outbreaks will likely continue occur regardless of anti-contamination measures. As a result, it makes sense to make it as easy as possible to shut down outbreaks before they become crises.
But that means government controlling our food! /s
Seriously though, where does the hash/uuid get added? The farmer? How many people will be against tracking your food and saying this violates peoples freedoms.
57 comments
[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 97.3 ms ] threadSo, perhaps they use superior ingredients but it's immaterial if at the end of the day their food safety suffers. Additionally, it points out that on a good day, local (within 350 miles) supplies only account for 10% of their ingredients and they tend not to advertise the fact that they use the same supply chain economies of scale whereby their beans, meats and salsas are prepared by third parties then shipped to restaurants.
I think its more accurate to say that Chipotle makes a big deal about how its ingredients follow the latest food fashion trends.
>"Contrary to popular wisdom, organic produce is not pesticide-free. Instead, it’s grown with primitive pesticides that can be significantly more hazardous to humans and to the environment. Organic agriculture also lacks the benefits of the many crops genetically improved with modern molecular techniques, like Bt-corn, which reduces the population of insects that allow toxic molds to infest corn. (Organic corn has higher levels of the toxins produced by these molds.)"
>"Chipotle rejects modern synthetic fertilizers in favor of suppliers who use manure on their crops. This approach may be “all natural” and “organic” and make some customers feel warm and fuzzy, but it should not come as a surprise that applying stool, feces and excrement to growing fruits and vegetables significantly raises the risk of spreading disease. Bruce M. Chassy, food science professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana scoured U.S. Food and Drug Administration data to conclude that organic food is four to eight times more likely to be recalled over safety concerns than conventionally grown products."
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2015/12/14/chipotle-...
Restaurants that process their ingredients in a central kitchen can put ingredients through more aggressive sanitation treatments, and deliver them to stores pre-processed. But, that doesn't come across as particularly fresh or local.
That said, the food IS more wholesome. As long as it stays that way, I will take my chances.
The notion that GMO food should be labeled?
Opposing roundup ready strains (and the like), because it causes super bugs?
Or objections to treating life as IP, because it enables rent seeking, enabling mega corps to further put the squeeze on independent, indigenous farmers?
Farmers whose crops get contaminated by GMO strains, forcing Big Ag to sue them into oblivion, should have done a better job controlling the weather and pollinators?
Maybe you think butterflys are a nuisance and the people that like them are nuts?
Plenty of restaurants, including large chains, are not. They choose to follow (and, at the same time, promote) it, they don't "have to".
I wonder if it's something that affects lower income groups more.
(Also, the annual total sick-from-foodborne-illness count is an estimate, the sick-from-the-Chipotle-outbreak count is confirmed.)
[0] http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/foodborne-germs.html
GMOs are a better solution, we can agree on that.
Accelerated breeding programs to, for example, use genes from one Nightshade in another, and then use a standard hybridization process to further select desirable traits without harming the viability of the plant (which, for futher example, many tomato and pepper breeds are simply shitty plants that require a lot of trellising and other tender loving care to produce a useful yield) is the better solution.
Also, another very useful solution that small time farmers deploy is using predator species (bugs, nematodes, other things that eat or otherwise stop harmful bugs), or planting companion crops, such as basil and onions and garlic alongside tomatoes and peppers to deter common pests.
I said your comment was unsubstantive (not 'unsubstantiated') because it didn't contain any information, just a snarky putdown of hypothetical other users. Such a comment is merely a status move and those are always uninteresting, despite their popularity.
http://www.mercola.com/article/irradiated/irradiation_danger...
EDIT: rspeer, fair request..
> The sensitivity of vitamins to radiation is unpredictable and food vitamin losses during the irradiation are often substantial. [0]
> Using a Co60 source, repeated irradiation of survivors of bacterial cultures at a level initially destroying a high proportion of cells gave rise to strains which were more resistant to irradiation than the original cultures.[1]
> Fecal coliform concentrations higher than 10(2) CFU/g (Brazilian standard) were found in 97 (73%) of the samples, and Salmonella was detected in 4 (3%) of the samples.[2]
0: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516...
1: http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/m61-027
2: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17536694
---
> a blatant agenda
Here's a couple more in-depth articles on food irradiation to review his bias and see if you can trust his info in the future:
http://www.mercola.com/article/irradiated/nuclear_lunch.htm
https://www.mercola.com/article/irradiated/irradiation.htm
What's up next? Chemtrails?
Edit to add : Mr Mercola and his ilk is one of the most aggressive and virulent antivaxers.
The articles that aren't fringe bullshit are actually pretty well done.
Unfortunately, for every legitimate article on his site, there's a "microwaves destroy food" and "cell phones eat your soul" type of article.
tl;dr: I'd use Mercola as a secondary link backing up more legitimate primary links, but I wouldn't base my entire argument on them.
Let's hope this trendy organic thing stays isolated to Chipotle. A world where Taco Bell causes anyone needless gastrointestinal distress is not a world I want to live in!
Personally, I prefer Chipotle anyhow.
Well, yes, it probably would be normal for many people to not see a doctor. That's why there's been extensive campaigns on, for example, "Be Clear on Cancer" asking people who see blood in their stool to talk to a doctor.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-its-f...
http://www.nhs.uk/bowelcancer/Pages/bowel-cancer.aspx
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odwalla
I grew up on a farm in Central Texas. We fertilized our vegetables fields with sheep manure. From our sheep.
I drank raw milk from a dairy down the road, pre-pasturization. It was wonderful stuff. The cream would rise to the top, and my mom would skim some of it off for coffee, but often we would just shake it up and drink it.
Until I moved to NYC last June, I still spent a lot of time on that farm with my family, eating vegetables and fruits fertilized by feces, eating sheep and chickens that I slaughtered myself, eating eggs right from the chickens with the detritus of chicken vag still on them. (yeah, you would rinse the eggs a little, but probably not enough to get rid of anything serious. The rinsing was purely cosmetic.)
My family runs a situation that I wouldn't call either organic, nor safe by any standards. They call it mutually beneficial.
The sheep eat the grass, then the sheep poop on the garden, the garden grows and is healthy. The chickens wander around the garden and eat the bugs that tend to eat the produce. The chickens also poop on the garden.
The chickens lay eggs that we mostly eat, and the ones we don't turn into more chickens. Sometimes we eat the chickens; sometimes we eat the sheep. Sometimes the eggs don't hatch, and we shoot them for target practice.
Anyway, my point is this: Not a single one of us has ever gotten sick from this scenario. I'm not suggesting that it's scalable or sustainable at all. Just that it hasn't been a problem for us.
I think it's interesting to note that a lot of people who go to my parent's farm from places like L.A. or Chicago or NYC do, in fact have digestive problems. I'll be curious to find out after a year or two in NYC if I have problems when I go home.
It isn't unreasonable for multiple things to be going on here.
There's an idea that because the vast majority of people live in urban areas and are not biologically equipped to handle natural food doesn't mean that really natural food is bad.
It might just mean that our bodies' adapt over time.
On the other hand, I get the point that the way of doing things that my family does is definitely not sustainable. Hell, we spend as much or more buying feed for the animals as we would just buying the stuff we eat there.
And that's using 43 acres for 30-something head of sheep and maybe 25 hens. And only maybe 20 acres for vegetables.
That's not even enough for a family of 5.
Though, I have to say, as proud as I am to be a part of Brooklyn, I'm probably a little more proud of my 96-year-old dad for managing that farm and taking care of all of it every day.
Especially in that crazy heat.
You should be, that's very impressive.
Anyone doing it at that age though is nonetheless impressive.
"sustainable, self regulating, environmentally friendly fish farm"
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with...
What's wrong with these people?
It's a bit shocking people would find it natural to bleed for several days before seeking medical help. On any country with universal healthcare this would be much less consequential, as the patient would be readily treated and the consequences would be largely diminished.
(Although looking at the long term share history, he's still up on the deal).
To me this suggests a very simple solution. Legislate that each ingredient parcel must come with an audit trail. Assign to each parcel a reference number - a UUID or hash - that can be used to trace back its entire life and history. The solution seems so obvious that there are probably significant obstacles against doing so that I am not aware of. If such a system is implemented, then the next time a contamination breaks out, the source can be quickly identified and eliminated, then apologies can be made, and business can resume as normal.
>> The spread of norovirus in Simi Valley and Boston was caused by breaches of protocol, Ells says
Eliminating contamination entirely is a highly desirable goal, but outbreaks will likely continue occur regardless of anti-contamination measures. As a result, it makes sense to make it as easy as possible to shut down outbreaks before they become crises.
Seriously though, where does the hash/uuid get added? The farmer? How many people will be against tracking your food and saying this violates peoples freedoms.