Chipotle has taken pork off the menu in nearly one third of its more than 1,700 restaurants after a pork supplier was found to have violated animal-welfare standards.  According to Business Insider, Chipotle learned of the violation through a routine audit, and currently does not have a timeline for when the "Carnitas" pork topping will be returning.

Market Watch reports that the supplier in question was raising pigs without access to the outdoors or to deeply bedded barns that are more comfortable for the animals, which are conditions that Chipotle requires. The name of the company has not yet been disclosed. 

In reaction to the violation, a Chipotle spokesman stated, "The differences in animal welfare between pigs raised this way and pigs that are conventionally raised [are] stark, and we simply won't compromise our standards this way."

When possible, Chipotle gets its ingredients from organic and local meat and vegetable producers that eschew antibiotics, added hormones or chemical pesticides. Market Watch reports that Chipotle's focus on what it calls sustainable food has helped propel the chain's fast growth across the country, drawing diners away from other, larger restaurant chains.

In the past, some people may have noticed that Chipotle sometimes warns customers it is using meat that doesn't meet "responsibly raised standards." Company spokesman Chris Arnold says this is typically because Chipotle has trouble securing supplies of beef raised without antibiotics or hormones.

However, the same default will not be used with pork. In an e-mail, Arnold stated, "In this case, we won't make that kind of substitution."

Though some customers may be angry, Yahoo Finance's Henry Blodget thinks the company made a good decision. He stated, "This is a smart move by Chipotle. They have gone to great lengths to talk about how they are much better for the world and better for the animals and others...

And if it had been discovered that they ignored an audit or some journalist did a story where they followed it and said it's all a big sham and the pigs were being treated horribly, that would have been catastrophic."