Chipotle on Why There’s No ‘Quick Fix’ for Carnitas Shortage

iStock Editorial/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Chipotle said in January that it wasn’t sure how long its “carnitas” shortage would last, and on Wednesday, it’s acknowledging there’s no “quick fix” to the problem, partly because it takes six months to raise a pig, a spokesman for Chipotle said.

Back in January, the company announced that it pulled one of its major pork suppliers because its audits discovered it wasn’t adhering to the restaurant chain’s protocols. Since then, the company has asked its other suppliers for more pork and tried different cuts of pig.

The pork dearth has stayed relatively consistent since then, with about a third of Chipotle restaurants without pork for its “carnitas” menu option today, Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold told ABC News.

“If there’s [no] pork we [can] get from somewhere else, there’s not a button we can push to get more,” Arnold said.

At least two things need to happen for Chipotle to obtain more pork, or for pork producers to produce more, Arnold said. First, producers have to be able to sell the pork from animals at a price that allows them to raise pigs to Chipotle’s standards and cover higher costs.

The world’s biggest pork producer, Smithfield Foods, based in Virginia, said it no longer produces antibiotic-free meat, which Chipotle asks its suppliers to do.

“We have produced antibiotic-free product lines in the past, but have since discontinued the product due to low market demand at a price point that sufficiently compensated producers for increased costs,” Smithfield’s director of corporate communications, Kathleen Kirkham, told ABC News.

Another reason there’s no “quick fix” to the shortage is it takes at least six months to raise a pig for pork, Arnold said.

“Even if we were in the position to buy a whole animal, which we don’t do because the economics don’t work, there isn’t a way to stimulate production that quickly,” Arnold said.

But don’t fret, carnitas fans. No single restaurant stays without the menu item for too long, Arnold said, because the company is rotating the shortage through its restaurants.

A restaurant could be out of “carnitas” for two to four weeks, and then have it for six to eight weeks, before the rotating pork wagon moves on. Besides, chicken is still the most popular protein at Chipotle restaurants by a “good margin,” Arnold said, while carnitas only accounts for about 6 to 7 percent of the restaurant’s entree, or protein, sales.

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