In April, the organic food lobbyists behind groups like U.S. Right To Know got Chipotle to claim they were removing foods which consisted of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) - by using a different soybean oil.
Activists had previously bragged that they moved the stock market and Chipotle products and management had nothing to do with the fast food company's success, before bragging that they moved partisan food writers like Michael Pollan and Tom Philpott of the left-wing magazine Mother Jones.
Now they were really ecstatic and trumped their win. But it was a public relations ruse. Chipotle was seeking to place a health halo on its shingle but the meat, the cheese and the soda they sold still all contained GMOs - meanwhile, the evidence-based nutrition community noted that their 1,500 calorie, 50 grams of fat burritos were still not remotely healthy and that GMOs had nothing to do with it.
And not all organic food activists were willing to "play ball" with the organic corporations funding fear and doubt about their competitors. False advertising lawsuits and salmonella don't help a corporate image. As of today, the stock price is 10 percent lower than April, when they generated their anti-science PR buzz.
Worse, activists now sense that Chipotle is an easy target. As a bit of humor, after the United Nations World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared red meat, and processed meats, a carcinogen (no, really - a sausage is as dangerous as asbestos and cigarettes, in a U.N. meta-analysis anyway) a Change.org petition sprung up demanding that Chipotle get rid of the cancer-causing stuff, not just because it is meat but because it is cooked in
herbicide tolerant mutagenic sun flowers
They don't seem to know what they are talking about, since they then note that GMOs were removed "because glyphosate is a class 2A carcinogen", right? Actually, that is the rationale activists often use. Isn't one biology and the other chemistry? You will never get a job at NRDC asking awkward questions like that.
But activists not knowing what they are talking about has never impacted Chipotle decision-making before, so look for them to remove all meat from their food real soon.
