Chipotle's silence on sustainability practices make it a target for CSR advocates

Chipotle is copping flack on all sides for refusing to demonstrate that its claims regarding GMOs and other sustainable practices are supported by fact and action

Sometimes life does imitate art. Last year, Chipotle Mexican Grill, the fast-growing burrito and taco chain, produced an internet comedy series called Farmed and Dangerous to satirize industrial agriculture. The villain, a sneering character named Buck Marshall, who runs a fictional outfit called the Industrial Food Image Bureau, was inspired by real-life PR operative Rick Berman.

Last month, Berman struck back. In a number of brutal ads and on a website dubbed Chubby Chipotle ("Food with hypocrisy"), Berman charged that Chipotle engages in deceptive marketing and sells unhealthy food. Berman runs the Washington-based Center for Consumer Freedom, an industry-backed group that opposes what it calls "a growing cabal of activists" including the "self-anointed 'food police', health campaigners, trial lawyers, personal-finance do-gooders, animal-rights misanthropes and meddling bureaucrats".