Food With Integrity

[lame54]

http://www.chipotle.com/en-US/Default.aspx?type=default

Chipotle Restaurants:

Our focus has always been on using the kinds of higher-quality ingredients and cooking techniques used in high-end restaurants to make great food accessible at reasonable prices. But our vision has evolved. While using a variety of fresh ingredients remains the foundation of our menu, we believe that "fresh is not enough, anymore." Now we want to know where all of our ingredients come from, so that we can be sure they are as flavorful as possible while understanding the environmental and societal impact of our business. We call this idea Food With Integrity, and it guides how we run our business.

Using higher-quality ingredients. We use a variety of ingredients that we purchase from carefully selected suppliers. We concentrate on where we obtain each ingredient, and this has become a cornerstone of our continuous effort to improve our food. Some of the ingredients we use include naturally raised pork, beef and chicken, as well as organically grown and sustainably grown produce, and we continue to investigate using even more naturally raised, organically grown and sustainably grown ingredients, in light of pricing considerations.

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We treat them like animals

The best way to treat animals with dignity and respect is to allow them to display their natural tendencies. When sourcing meat, we work hard to find farmers and ranchers who are doing things the right way.

Pork

Many pigs are raised on factory farms and don't have a great life. They are penned in concrete and steel and given large amounts of antibiotics to fend off the diseases this type of confinement breeds. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, American pork producers use over 10 million pounds of antibiotics per year to keep their confinement raised pigs from getting sick. That's more than an estimated three times the amount used to treat all human illness.

Between the mistreatment of the pigs and the massive amount of waste produced, these farms aren't good for anyone.

Luckily, there is a better way.

There are ranchers whose pigs are raised outside or in deeply bedded pens, are never given antibiotics and are fed a vegetarian diet. It's the way animals were raised 50 years ago before huge factory farms changed the industry. We believe pigs that are cared for in this way enjoy happier, healthier lives and produce the best pork we've ever tasted.

We call this style of ranching naturally raised, and since 2001, we have sourced 100% of our pork from producers who follow these guidelines.

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Sustainable business plan

We’re working closely with farmers and ranchers to ensure their operations create as small an impact as possible on the environment, so it’s also important we do what we can to make each Chipotle restaurant as green as we can get it. We have a long way to go to get things where we want them, but with the nation’s first ever Platinum LEED certified restaurant under our belts, we’re starting to figure this stuff out a little.


Go to the website for more - much more

[sunwyn]

1. I really admire this approach but aren't they being investigated by the Feds for hiring lots of

illegals?

[lame54]

2. and they are cooperating...

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110205132758AAmcf0W

(Chris) Arnold (Chipotle spokesman) warned that more employee dismissals may come.

“If they cannot provide legal documentation, then we cannot legally employ them,” Arnold said, declining to specify how many have already been fired.

U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement spokeswoman Gillian Brigham said the agency is pushing a broader strategy of “attacking” companies that hire illegal workers and focusing on corporate hiring practices.

“We want employers to understand that the integrity of their employment records is just as important as their tax records,” she said. The goal, she said, is for immigration authorities to inspire the same level of compliance -– and fear -– that the Internal Revenue Service creates.

Arnold said that policy is working at Chipotle, which “hopes to put the matter behind us” by working with immigration authorities to improve hiring practices and expanding participation in the government’s E-verify system, an online program that uses federal databases to check whether employees are in the country legally and authorized to work.

[lame54]

3. .