On Monday, Chipotle announced that it has finally accomplished something no other national restaurant chain has done — it has stopped serving foods made directly from genetically modified ingredients.
Chipotle will stop serving GMO foods — despite zero evidence they’re harmful to eat
To be clear, there's no good evidence that the people who eat at Chipotle will gain any health benefits from this move. Numerous scientific studies have concluded that the GMO foods currently on the market are just as safe to eat as conventional foods. Here's what the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) said in 2012: "The science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe."
Even so, Chipotle is responding to a growing fraction of the public that is strongly opposed to GMOs. Sometimes these opponents raise reasonable concerns — say, about the environmental impacts of overusing herbicides like Roundup on crops engineered to be herbicide-tolerant (though see here for more on this debate, and note that herbicide overuse is still a huge issue with many of the non-GMO crops Chipotle is still using).
Unfortunately, there’s also a loud contingent of activists, like the “Food Babe,“ who have managed to spread overhyped nonsense about the purported dangers of eating GMOs. And Chipotle seems to be buying into this often pseudoscientific frenzy. On its website, the company claims that the studies vindicating GMOs are mostly industry-funded. That’s just not true. Here’s a massive EU review of a decade’s worth of independent research, concluding that GMOs are safe to eat.
Here’s more detail from Chipotle’s website on the move. Here’s a statement by Chipotle’s co-CEO Steve Ells:
“There is a lot of debate about genetically modified foods,” said Ells, in a statement. “Though many countries have already restricted or banned the use of GMO crops, it’s clear that a lot of research is still needed before we can truly understand all of the implications of widespread GMO cultivation and consumption. While that debate continues, we decided to move on non-GMO ingredients.”
Chipotle is hardly alone in trying to appeal to GMO opponents. Whole Foods is promising to label all products with GMO ingredients by 2018. Even Walmart has been trying to appeal to the anti-GMO crowd.
It’s not easy to get rid of GMO ingredients
This won’t be an easy move for Chipotle, logistically speaking. After all, more than 93 percent of corn and soy in the United States has now been genetically modified to be either herbicide tolerant or insect tolerant (or both). That means it’s very hard to find corn meal or soy oil that doesn’t contain GMOs.
The company has been scouring the country for suppliers who can help with the task. Stephanie Strom of the New York Times has the best blow-by-blow on how it happened:
Getting rid of genetically engineered corn was easiest. Chipotle’s primary tortilla supplier was already producing non-GMO corn flour in small amounts, and it agreed to increase its production.
[But replacing soy oil to fry chips and tortilla was harder.] Chipotle’s chefs preferred sunflower oil but finding enough was tricky. Chipotle found a farmer willing to increase his production of sunflower, but the company needed more oil than he could produce.
So instead of using one oil for the majority of its needs, Chipotle now uses sunflower to fry its chips and tortillas, while a non-G.M.O. rice bran oil will be mixed into rice and used to fry fajita vegetables.
The flour tortillas posed a bigger problem. "The shortening had an oil in it that was derived from soybeans," said Chris Arnold, Chipotle’s spokesman. ... So Chipotle’s flour tortillas are now made with a non-G.M.O. canola oil, which costs more, and the company said last week that it might have to raise prices slightly this year.
It's worth noting that Chipotle's menu won't be entirely GMO-free. After all, many of the soft drinks it serves will still container sweetener made from genetically modified corn. (It is not clear why Chipotle would keep these soda machines in place if they're really so worried about the safety of GMOs.) And the chicken and pork the chain serves could well be raised on GMO feed.
Still, the restaurant has gone much further than many of its competitors — and this could well be the start of a larger trend.
For more on this issue, here's our full guide to GMOs:
Further reading
-- How GMO crops conquered the United States
-- “Traditional crop breeding” isn’t nearly as traditional as you think
