Chipotle Hires One Of Its Biggest Food Safety Critics

Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE: CMG) has thus far failed to move past a food safety scandal that resulted in an E. coli outbreak. Shares of the casual fast-food restaurant have lost 5 percent since the start of 2016 and nearly 30 percent over the past year.

As Chipotle looks to move past the food safety scandal, the company has hired two leading food safety experts. According to Reuters, one of Chipotle's new advisers is David Acheson, who was very critical of the company's initial response to the outbreak last year.

Acheson is also a former official at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He was also a large critic of Chipotle's initial response in the early stages of the outbreak last year.

Acheson told Reuters back in December, "I'm not a believer that you can test your way to safety," and argued that the company should focus more food sourcing and handling practices.

Chipotle also hired David Theno, a food safety consultant and former Jack-In-The-Box executive who was instrumental in fixing the company's food safety scandal and deadly E. coli outbreak in the 1990s.

In addition, a few months ago, Chipotle hired James Marsden, an ex-meat science professor at Kansas State University.

"If I had to put together a dream team to fix something, you could do a lot worse," Don Schaffner, a food science professor at Rutgers University told Reuters. But, he added, "I've begun to wonder a little bit about too many cooks. Each of those guys is going to have a perspective on what to do to fix the problem."