Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal reported on startup Intrexon Corp.’s efforts to eradicate pests responsible for inflicting “billions of dollars a year in lost revenue and crop-protection expenses.” The pests in question are diamondback moths that wreak havoc on cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower crops, and the efforts involve genetically modifying females of the species so they die before reproducing. WSJ writer Jacob Bunge adds that a GMO potato developed by J.R. Simplot Co. that develops fewer black spots from bruising recently was granted U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. Further, says the journalist, Arcadia Biosciences Inc. “is developing varieties of rice and trees that can grow in salty and dry soils.”
Readers may conclude these developments are cause for confetti, balloons and public celebrations on every street in the United States and throughout the world. However, backlash against genetically modified organisms continues unabated without any scientific evidence to support the alarms raised by what Bunge identifies as “consumer and environmental groups.”
I would add to Bunge’s list the “religious” shareholder activists at As You Sow and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. Both groups gin up unwarranted GMO fears and spread disinformation while advocating in their proxy shareholder resolutions for GMO labeling, public disclosure of company lobbying and political contributions, and calls to avoid using GMOs altogether.
Funny how the non-scientists at AYS and ICCR claim a “scientific consensus” for catastrophic, human-caused climate change but can’t identify one single peer-reviewed study to support their claims GMOs pose risks to the environment and consumers. Except it’s not funny at all.
The nuns, priests, clergy and other religious of AYS and ICCR are free to toil in their gardens devoid of GMOs and pesticides when they’re not jet-setting to Paris climate-change conferences and tootling around in their little bus to Occupy Wall Street protests and campaign conventions. But good luck with feeding the world’s population organic kale and arugula grown one acre at a time.
Appearing on the same page as Bunge’s article is a report by Julie Jargon, “Chipotle Pulls Back on Local Ingredients.” Trust me, I take no pleasure in the recent pain experienced by Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., however much it points out the wrongheaded agenda of ICCR and AYS. Writes Jargon:
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. has touted its use of local ingredients and fresh produce to help differentiate it in a crowded fast-food market. Now a string of disease outbreaks is forcing the once-scrappy upstart to act more like the big chains it long has derided.
Chipotle expects to lower its use of locally sourced ingredients and is centralizing the preparation of some vegetables as it seeks to shore up food safety following an E. coli outbreak that sickened 52 people in nine states and a norovirus episode in Boston. The burrito chain hopes the steps can help it regain consumers who have shunned its outlets, eroding sales.
Health officials haven’t been able to identify the source of the E. coli outbreak but say produce was the probable cause.
Chipotle co-CEO Steve Ellis has promised investors the chain will take steps to address contamination issues while still providing fresh, locally grown ingredients. However, one can anticipate a drop in share value as costs increase for consumers. I congratulate Ellis for sticking to his guns and protecting his company’s brand. Henry I. Miller, however, is less forgiving. In a Forbes essay titled “Chipotle: The Long Defeat of Doing Nothing Well,” Miller brings out the long dining knives:
The title of this article, which was inspired by a line from poet John Masefield, seems apt: Chipotle, the once-popular Mexican restaurant chain, is experiencing a well-deserved downward spiral.
The company found it could pass off a fast-food menu stacked with high-calorie, sodium-rich options as higher quality and more nutritious because the meals were made with locally grown, genetic engineering-free ingredients. And to set the tone for the kind of New Age-y image the company wanted, Chipotle adopted slogans like, “We source from farms rather than factories” and, “With every burrito we roll or bowl we fill, we’re working to cultivate a better world.”
The rest of the company wasn’t as swift as the marketing department, however. Last week, about 140 people, all but a handful Boston College students, were recovering from a nasty bout of norovirus-caused gastroenteritis, a foodborne illness apparently contracted while eating Chipotle’s “responsibly raised” meats and largely organic produce.
And they’re not alone. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been tracking another, unrelated Chipotle food poisoning outbreak in California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington, in which victims have been as young as one year and as old as 94. Using whole genome sequencing, CDC investigators identified the DNA fingerprint of the bacterial culprit in that outbreak as E. coli strain STEC O26, which was found in all of the sickened customers tested.
Miller isn’t finished castigating the chain – not by a long shot:
Outbreaks of food poisoning have become something of a Chipotle trademark; the recent ones are the fourth and fifth this year, one of which was not disclosed to the public. A particularly worrisome aspect of the company’s serial deficiencies is that there have been at least three unrelated pathogens in the outbreaks–Salmonella and E. coli bacteria and norovirus. In other words, there has been more than a single glitch; suppliers and employees have found a variety of ways to contaminate what Chipotle cavalierly sells (at premium prices) to its customers.
These episodes reveal several things. First and foremost, Chipotle is a company so out of control and negligent that it repeatedly endangers the public. But they also illustrate something important about food safety: Although the crops, meats and other foods produced by modern conventional agricultural technologies may not bring to mind a sentimental Norman Rockwell painting, they are on average safer than food that reflects pandering to current fads.
Ouch! One wonders what ignominies Miller would inflict upon ICCR and AYS for their attempts to force the Chipotle business model on the rest of the world. Forget it, Miller, that’s my turf; my moth-free, pest- and bruise-resistant and bountiful turf.