Chipotle caves

I love me some Chipotle. I've been to the original location more times than I can count. And from the beginning, Steve Ells has been adamant of the company serving naturally raised meat, and he's built a powerhouse of a company.

But there's a big beef shortage going on. So to meet demand, Chipotle is lowering its standards and will begin to serve beef from cattle treated with antibiotics because of illness. The company is spinning it as the antibiotics problem is not rooted in cows being treated because of illness but using them to promote growth (and Chipotle still won't use those cattle).

It's disappointing, and there could be a decent backlash to the move, and comments on stories I've read today show that.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/chipotle-to-allow-some-antibiotic-treated-beef.html

 

Shrimp is a good middle ground.

 

Probably true. I care a little bit, but certainly not enough to not go get a steak fajita burrito for lunch. Speaking of which ...

 

Jake, This is just from what I have read, particularly from Michael Pollan, who has written a number of popular books about food and our modern food chain. ...

But widespread antibiotic use in cows is symptomatic of a number of other things that are screwed up about the way cows are raised and slaughtered today. Cows naturally eat grass. But most commercially-bred cows aren't fed grass. It's more expensive than feeding them corn feed, which speeds up their lifespan, fattens them up much more quickly, and allows them to be slaughtered much quicker -- churning them out for money more quickly.

Cows don't digest corn well. They are not evolved to eat corn -- their rumen is designed to digest grass, not starchy corn. And that is why so many cows bred to be slaughtered and eaten get sick.

The way around that is to give them antibiotics. Lots of lots of them, almost from birth. Because when you start feeding them corn, you screw up their digestion, and that leads to a lot of sickness due to the stress it puts on their bodies (their rumen, which can lead to all kinds of other problems -- mainly their livers), which leads to cow diseases. So they feed the cows antibiotics, first to prevent rumen bloat, then to deal with the liver problems that creates.

As a result of that, we have a number of messed up things going on. A cycle of drugs and meat, which Pollan has described. It all begins with feeding cows what they aren't made to eat, and then an attempt at a "technological" fix that actually screws things up even more.

If you eat meat, you essentially are eating meat from sick cows -- because of the prevalence of corn feed and how it has taken over our food supply.

Cows being fed corn feed and being pushed antibiotics is unnatural, no matter how you slice it. If you kept the animals on that diet beyond the 14 months they are typically fattened up before being slaughtered, the diet itself would kill the animals. It would blow out their livers, if the bloat and rumen problems didn't get them first (why they are fed antibiotics). The only way to even get the 14 months of fattening up is because of the antibiotics.

Plus, if food is really just a chain of what you eating being a function of what you eat ate, everything boils down to people having a diet that is essentially processed corn and soy feed. It runs through everything most people eat. That beef is a prime example.