National Day of Action Against Chipotle- July 25, 2012

Chipotle Mexican Grill, one of the first fast casual restaurants, prides itself on bringing “food with integrity” to its customers. Founded in 1993 in Denver, it has grown to over 1200 restaurants, each one company owned, in 43 states, DC, Canada, England, and France.

“Food with Integrity” is Chipotle’s mission to ensure that all of its ingredients are raise with respect to the animals, the environment, and the farmers. Its pork, chicken, and beef are raised naturally and not in concentrated animal feed lots while it attempts to source local and organic produce. While all of this is laudable and its chickens and pigs are “happy”, are the farmworkers who actually supply their ingredients happy?

Since 2006, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the farmworkers rights organization in the tomato fields of Florida, has been urging Chipotle to sign on to its Fair Food agreement to ensure a penny per pound increase in farmworkers wages and justice in the fields. Chipotle has constantly rebuffed their efforts while extolling their ethical business practices. Human and labor rights activists have called that “chipocrisy”.

At ICPJ, we support justice for the people who feed us so in solidarity with the men and women who pick our tomatoes we are participating in a National Day of Action against Chipotle on Wednesday, July 25th

Location: 235 S. State St., Ann Arbor (near the State Theatre)

Time: at 12:30pm and again at 6:00pm

What: With signs and literature, we will send the message that it is not “food with integrity”   when chickens and pigs are treated fairer than people.

To learn more about the work for justice in the tomato fields of Florida, please visit the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.