Hundreds of Chipotle restaurants are now without pork for carnitas after the restaurant chain suspended a supplier for violating its standards. Chris Arnold, a spokesman for the chain, told the Associated Press that Chipotle learned about the supplier’s violation last Friday through a routine audit, and it did not have a timeline for when pork would return to those affected stores.
Arnold said most of the issues related to the violations concerned the housing for the pigs. Chipotle demands that its suppliers raise pigs in humane conditions with access to the outdoors, rather than in cramped pens.
On other occasions, Chipotle customers may have noticed signs saying a restaurant is serving meat that doesn't meet the company's "responsibly raised" standards. That's typically because Chipotle has trouble securing supplies of beef raised without antibiotics or hormones, Arnold said. The company then serves beef that was "conventionally raised."
That is not happening with the carnitas, however.
"In this case, we won't make that kind of substitution," Arnold said in an email.
