(by Kelly)

At Chipotle's last two "Cultivate" festivals in San Francisco, their keynote speakers have been extremely dismissive of our criticism of the company's humanewashing, in an effort to downplay the violence they profit on.

After our disruption of a cooking demonstration at the festival last year, Culinary Manager Nate Appleman said, “We’re mixing the chicken and the pork… I love all animals the same, so I want to use both of them!” Appleman has also made it clear that “humane” rhetoric is just about selling the product, saying, “You put tripe in a bowl and tell them it’s from a humanely raised cow, and they’re going to eat it.”

And at the Cultivate festival we disrupted just a few weeks ago, Chef Graham Elliot played “Meat is Murder” as he walked on stage (before we even made our presence known), and when we demonstrated, he joked about foie gras, in an effort to mock the animals and dismiss their oppression. And you can see in the image above that he's behind Brian, pretending to be like a campy killer from a horror movie, making a joke not only of our comparison between violence against nonhumans and humans alike, of all violence.

They source from animals exploited in the same awful conditions as every other fast-food chain, and they get more sales and substantial premiums from their "humane" rhetoric. Their CEO has literally promised that Chipotle will never exploit animals, when the vast majority of the company's money is made from products that include using animals without their consent (and in crying protest of that violent use). If that doesn't already define "humanewashing" for us, the way their spokespeople are so incredibly dismissive of concern for violence against animals should make it abundantly clear that the company's claims of caring about animals are utterly superficial.

Chipotle is not animal-friendly. Chipotle a leader in the oppression of our nonhuman kin. We have to make it clear to the world that discriminating against, using, and killing other animals is not a positive thing to feel good about.