Chipotle treats customers like idiots: the burrito chain stokes bogus GMO fears and tries to profit from anti-biotech propaganda.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald

IN APRIL, the high-class Mexican food chain Chipotle announced that it was going GMO-free. That is, the company would no longer use ingredients derived from modern biotech crops.

Chipotle says it sells "food with integrity." The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines integrity as "the quality of being honest and fair." In making this decision, alas, the company is being neither honest nor fair about the safety and environmental benefits provided by modern genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Chipotle offers three "key reasons" for rejecting genetically modified ingredients. The first: "We don't believe the scientific community has reached a consensus on the long-term implications of widespread GMO cultivation and consumption." As evidence for this statement, the company notes that "in October 2013 a group of about 300 scientists from around the world signed a statement rejecting the claim that there is a scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs for human consumption." Three hundred whole scientists!

So who are these GMO rejecters? The cited statement was issued by a notorious anti-biotech claque, the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility. Signers included people who have made whole punditry careers out of anti-biotech rhetoric, such as Charles Benbrook, Vandana Shiva, and Gilles-Eric Seralini. Benbrook regularly (and incorrectly) claims that planting biotech crops has boosted pesticide applications; Vandana Shiva lies about biotech crop failures causing farmer suicides in India; Seralini produced a bogus study in 2013 that claimed that rats fed biotech corn developed breast cancer. (The study was later retracted.)

The plain fact is that every independent scientific body that has ever evaluated the safety of modern biotech crops has deemed them safe for human beings to eat. This includes the Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and many more.

Chipotle's second "key reason" for rejecting modern biotech ingredients is that "the cultivation of GMOs can damage the environment." As its sole evidence, the company cites a study estimating that pesticide and herbicide use increased by more than 400 million pounds as a result of growing biotech crops. That study was conducted by none other than the aforementioned Benbrook, and it was funded by leading anti-biotech groups, such as the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy...