IN the NEWS - Chipotle Lesson

Pride goeth before destruction,

and an haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs16:18

1) The story

"Inside Chipotle’s Contamination Crisis

Smugness and happy talk about sustainability aren’t working anymore.

 

 

 Collins was among 53 people in nine states who were sickened with the same strain of E. coli; 46 had eaten at Chipotle in the week before they fell ill. Twenty got sick enough to be hospitalized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I trusted they were providing me with ‘food with integrity,’ ” Collins says, sarcastically repeating the company motto. “We fell for their branding.” Chipotle’s public stance during the outbreak irritated him, too.

....smug worked pretty well for Chipotle Mexican Grill. It’s grown into a chain of more than 1,900 locations, thanks in part to marketing—including short animated films

about the evils of industrial agriculture—that reminds customers that its fresh ingredients and naturally raised meat are better than rivals’ and better for the world. The implication: If you eat Chipotle, you’re doing the right thing, and maybe you’re better, too. It helped the company, charging about $7 for a burrito, reach a market valuation of nearly $24 billion. Its executives seemed to have done the impossible and made a national fast-food chain feel healthy.

Fewer people associate Chipotle with “healthy” now. Three months before Collins was infected with E. coli, five people fell ill eating at a Seattle-area restaurant. By the time local health officials had confirmed a link, the outbreak was over, so no one said anything. In August, 234 customers and employees contracted norovirus at a Chipotle in Simi Valley, Calif., where another worker was infected. Salmonella-tainted tomatoes at 22 outlets in Minnesota sickened 64 people in August and September; nine had to be hospitalized. Norovirus struck again in late November: More than 140 Boston College students picked up the highly contagious virus from a nearby Chipotle, including half of the men’s basketball team. An additional 16 students and three health-care staff picked it up

from the victims. The source? A sick worker who wasn’t sent home although Chipotle began offering paid sick leave in June. In the second week of December, when Chipotle should have been on highest alert, a Seattle restaurant had to be briefly shut down after a health inspection found that cooked meat on the takeout line wasn’t being kept at a high enough temperature. And in the most recent case, on Dec. 21, the CDC announced it was investigating an outbreak of what seems to be a different and rare version of E. coli 026 that’s sickened five people in two states who ate at Chipotle in mid-November. The company says it had expected to see additional cases. It still doesn’t know which ingredients made people ill.

At Chipotle, three different pathogens caused the five known outbreaks. That wasn’t inevitable or coincidental. “There’s a problem within the company,” says Michael Doyle, the director of the center for food safety at the University of Georgia. Chipotle has gotten big selling food that’s unprocessed, free of antibiotics and GMOs, sometimes organic, sometimes local. “Blah, blah, blah,” says Doug Powell, a retired food-safety professor.......

E. coli is spread through human and animal feces. The harmful microbes can be transmitted to crops in irrigation water, or if animals are allowed to defecate in the fields, or if manure isn’t properly treated. Cooking food long enough at high enough temperatures or properly sanitizing it kills E. coli. Hard-to-clean produce that’s eaten raw is considered high-risk. At Chipotle that’s the tomatoes, lettuce, and cilantro—in other words, the same stuff that gives Chipotle its fresh-tasting advantage."
BloombergNews

2) The Lesson

An entire food chain based upon the notion that they are "better" than their rivals, and YOU are a better person if you eat at their

restaurant....based upon slick marketing & that the animals for meat were treated nicer before slaughter. The selling point of human righteousness based upon what restaurant you eat at? Don't trust in man---or Chipotle's marketing plan to line their pockets---for your standards of righteousness.....aim for God's standard.
No one is a better person because they chose Chipotle over McDonalds to eat out at......just try eating healthy WHEREVER you eat at and follow God's advice for food, not a marketing campaign by Chipotle's attempt to make you feel superior because you lined their pockets instead of some other restaurants pockets...