Chipotle’s GMO message is muddled

Let’s unpack this burrito bowl. Chipotle Mexican Grill last week became the first large U.S. restaurant chain to declare it would not use any genetically engineered ingredients in its menu offerings. The fast-food giant stated its position with a bold section of its website: “A farewell to GMOs: When it comes to our food, genetically modified ingredients don’t make the cut.” If you’re new to the acronym, the O stands for organisms, as in, the origins of the foods we eat.

We applaud Chipotle’s ambition to use healthy ingredients. For years, the restaurant has touted its commitment to serving “food with integrity” by offering a menu of mostly tacos and burritos using just a few dozen ingredients that are — as much as possible — fresh, locally sourced and free of additives and hormones.

It’s not easy, as nearly every sprig of cilantro, tomatillo and black bean is part of a larger agricultural process that’s difficult to monitor. Scroll deeper into the Chipotle website and you’ll learn that, in fact, many of the beverages sold at Chipotle do contain GMOs (in the high-fructose corn syrup), and some of the meat and dairy served at Chipotle is “likely to come from animals given at least some GMO feed.” Still, they’re trying.

What troubles us is that Chipotle has embraced the fearmongering of some food, environmental and health activists who have turned “GMO” into a dirty word. By declaring its goal to eliminate GMO food from its kitchens, Chipotle may be pleasing its health-conscious guacamole fans, but it is missing an opportunity to educate them on the nuances of food science.

Genetic engineering, like the science behind vaccines and climate change, is easy to misunderstand. The biotechnology companies that pioneered this research have done a poor job of explaining advancements to the public over the 30 years since the first slow-ripening tomatoes were developed. (Perhaps they thought that Gregor Mendel had already paved that path with his pea plants a century earlier.) And aggressive Big Food companies, led by Monsanto, have provoked pushback — by watchdogs in the U.S. who say Big Food cares more about profit than public health and by European Union countries protective of their own agricultural interests.

Concerns about the politics and business ethics of the agriculture industry are separate and valid issues that should not be muddled into an oversimplified stance on food science.

Let’s keep the focus on the science. Ample research and decades of experience have shown that genetically modified crop technology is safe. The challenge, which we encourage Chipotle to address, is that GMO represents a vast range of applications. Packing them all together makes for easy marketing (Chipotle’s “G-M-Over It” line is cute), but it unfairly discounts the important — and safe — contributions that biotechnology is making to global food security.

Onesuccessstory:“goldenrice.”Through genetic engineering, this new type of rice contains beta-carotene, the source of vitamin A, which is severely lacking in the diets of millions in Africa and Asia. The scientists who developed it were just honored with a Patents for Humanity award by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

That might be too much to take in over a chicken burrito, but we urge Chipotle to try.