Chipotle may become the first major restaurant chain to go GMO-free.
The Mexican fast food chain announced that it would only be serving food without using GMOs as ingredients, according to Huffington Post.
“This is another step toward the visions we have of changing the way people think about and eat fast food,” Chipotle’s co-CEO Steve Ells told The New York Times.
“Just because food is served fast doesn’t mean it has to be made with cheap raw ingredients, highly processed with preservatives and fillers and stabilizers and artificial colors and flavors.”
There have been questions as to whether Chipotle would successfully be able to change into a GMO-free menu because the chickens and pigs the company uses still consume GMO-feed, but the restaurant chain has reassured burrito-lovers that it is, in fact, possible, according to the U.K. publication The Daily Mail.
“It’s relatively easy for us to have all non-GMO ingredients,” Ells stated in an interview with CNN Money.
“I mean, because we don’t have many ingredients in the first place. You know, we’ve always paid attention to the way we’ve sourced food since we started 22 years ago. Like artificial colors, additives, preservatives, we’d just rather not be a part of that.”
The popular fast food chain has reportedly been working on this development for years. Chipotle was reportedly the first to disclose all GMO-containing ingredients on its menu in 2013.
“Genetically modified foods hold out promises that are at best untested, and at worst unrealistic,” Ells wrote in a blog past last year.
“Traditional edible plants and animals have evolved alongside humans over thousands of years to provide the people who eat them with essential nourishment. In exchange for this, we have an obligation to those plants and animals to keep caring for them responsibly. For most of our history, it’s been a great deal for all involved. And we’d like to help keep it that way.”
