For those of you that haven’t seen this gem of a video from Chipotle, I think it’s awesome. It’s one of the first big-brand ads that shows consumers what their food actually looks like and where it comes from. I know that meat is often rubbed with chemicals to kill bacteria, pork producers in the U.S. alone use over 10 million pounds of antibiotics per year (Union of Concerned Scientists), many pigs, cows, and chickens are raised on factory farms with limited mobility and in unsanitary conditions, and animals are pumped with hormones to grow more quickly, but only after doing my own research. I’m pretty sure main-stream America does not know. And the efforts so far to spread this message have largely come from the NGO and activist community, which often falls on deaf ears (unfortunately).

Although advertising irks me in a serious way, I do love that Chipotle is taking a stand in this video and showing a lot of unknowing Americans what their food system actually looks like (in a not as graphically horrifying way). Check it out and let me know what you think. Of course it’s a pro-Chipotle ad and they have their own motivations, but I think they are passing an important message to a community that needs it.

Chipotle also walks the talk:

• Since 2001 they source 100% of their pork from ranchers whose pigs are raised outside or in bedded pens, antibiotic-free, and fed a vegetarian diet.
• Commitment to continue to use their size to increase demand for pasture-raised cows (for meat and dairy)
• Striving towards 100% of chickens raised without antibiotics and with no additives (like arsenic, a common one, seriously).
• 40% organically grown beans
• Family farm-preferred (includes crop rotation, multiple crops one one service, no pesticides)
• Increasingly using local sources