Agriculturalists speaking out in wake of Chipotle ad

(Photo by Kathy Dixon, Virginia Farm Bureau)

If you were watching the Grammys last Sunday or if you read the news last week, you might have heard about restaurant chain Chipotle’s advertisement titled “Back to the Start.” While some viewers saw it for the first time during the Grammys, it has been on the Internet since August 2011. The video has had more than 5.34 million views since it was uploaded to the Chipotle YouTube channel.

Since the commercial aired I have read several blog posts about the it, some from farmers. One in particular that drew me in was by Crystal on her blog Crystal Cattle.

The purpose of Crystal’s blog is to “tell agriculture’s story, encourage consumers to ask where their food comes from and give farmers and ranchers a tool kit to be agvocates for agriculture.”

She grew up on her family’s Simmental cattle farm in Canada and “learned how to care for my animals, the land and the importance of producing safe, nutritious food for the world.” She went to school in the Midwest and loved it so much that she never left. She has beef cattle of her own and works in the industry.

 “For too long we’ve let others tell our story,” she writes, “and they haven’t told it very truthfully.”

Crystal has written about Chipotle before, but she revisited the subject after the commercial aired last week (Read the full post about the commercial here).

In her post, Crystal dissected the commercial, explaining what is wrong with the Chipotle picture. She notes that pigs stay indoors because it gets cold in the winter. She also discusses dairy cows and the beef cattle on her own farm, and she tackles the issue of hormone use in livestock.

“These hormones are already naturally occurring in livestock,” Crystal wrote. “There are actually more hormones in a head of cabbage than a steak, by a lot.”

Crystal makes a lot of good points in her post, as does Daren Williams of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association on this blog post, where he quotes Chipotle’s annual report to offer some insight. He also said he isn’t asking for consumers to boycott Chipotle, but instead to let their voices be heard about their marketing practices.

I worried that when the commercial came out to the masses that people would blindly support Chipotle and the message of its commercial. It made me happy when I saw that many consumers—along with agriculturalists—are speaking out and telling their side of the story. This needs to happen more often.

Virginia Farm Bureau is a member of The U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance. USFRA includes a wide range of prominent farmer- and rancher-led organizations and agricultural partners. They are collaborating to open discussions and answer Americans’ questions about how farmers raise our food. That’s what farmers did after the Chipotle ad, and hopefully that’s what they will continue to do—speak up.

Other blogs that share agricultural insights on the Chipotle ad include these:

• Chris Chinn at chrischinn;
• Jennifer Keller at Plowing through life; and
• Chris Goode at Goodeness Gracious.