by Dan Rubinstein / photograph by Jessica Fern Facette
I stopped eating meat in 2001. There was no single reason. No, the terrorists didn’t win. My arteries weren’t hardening. My views on animal welfare didn’t shift. My religious beliefs, or lack thereof, didn’t move me. And my vegetarian friends didn’t suddenly start to proselytize. They ate, I watched and asked questions. Then I read Fast Food Nation and interviewed its author, Eric Schlosser, and the connections between North America’s agri-industrial complex – horrid conditions for slaughterhouse workers as well as cows – and my wellbeing became too clear to ignore. The book’s reportage, and Schlosser’s oft-repeated knockout punch – “There is shit in the meat” – made the difference.
After my daughters were born three years ago, however, I began eating meat again. My wife’s second-trimester cheeseburger cravings didn’t pull me back. There were a range of reasons. Our pediatrician, for starters, who said, in a tone we deemed patronizing at first,
“Feed the girls meat. Just a little bit. They need the protein. It packs more punch than beans.” We resisted until checking with a nutritionist friend, a vegetarian, who told us that Doc was right. So we began buying bison, then chicken, then beef, at farmers’ markets. And suddenly our dietary landscape had shifted again. Was it better to buy tofu imported from Asia, packaged in plastic and shipped thousands of miles, or meat from a farm just outside the city?
Changing your perspective, even about something as basic as what’s on your plate, is vital. Rigidity is the enemy of innovation, of positive transformation.
Even if you’re dubious about Big Beef, it’s wise to listen to people like Kirstin Kotelko, who I met at a suburban supermarket when I crashed her photo shoot. Kotelko’s company produces a line of hormone- and antibiotic-free beef. But wait a minute… she works hand-in-hand with Big Beef? Bern Kotelko, her father, runs Highland Feeders, the sixth largest feedlot in Canada and the parent company behind Kirstin’s Spring Creek Premium Beef. (Not that he’s indicted in Schlosser’s book, or party to the exploitation of immigrant workers at the multinational-owned slaughterhouses in Brooks, Alberta.) But wait again… Bern’s fourth-generation ranch also has a biogas plant, which turns manure into electricity and powers more than 700 homes. You try to make sense of it. Big Beef bad but biogas good?
These are the types of questions and connections we’re trying to explore in unlimited. Business, the economy and “markets” aren’t ephemeral constructs. They are what we eat, they are where we work, they are how we live. And like us, they are constantly changing.
The theme of this issue – transformation – seemed a sensible way to begin the new year. It courses through the cover story, in which writer Sophie Lees documents one women’s individual career change amid a much broader gender shift. “Transformation” is also infused throughout Scott Messenger’s feature on how to advance in your field (even if he bailed on his own first calling). And it’s central to the other narratives we present, stories about making music full-time, about navigating the divide between the secular and the sacred, and about overcoming an addiction that’s endemic to our time and place.
On a lighter note, coincidence abounds in this, our third issue. Three men named Bryce took photos for us, there are three photos of musicians, and three photos of people in cowboy hats. (Yeah, we know, that’s an Alberta cliché, but one is Kirstin Kotelko, an atypical rancher, and another is a decidedly non-country musician. OK, the third is a rodeo star named Denton Edge – the more things change, the more they stay….)
Finally, there’s one more coincidental trifecta: in our regular Unlisted feature, the three people who reflect on “transformation” are named Chris, Kirstin and Kris. The Chris, Calgary writer Chris Turner, whose book about sustainable living we excerpt, sums up my swirling thoughts on transformation and business circa 2008 quite well: “We have a fantastic opportunity to correct what I think are some glaring faults with how we’ve been living in the industrial age.” As long as we keep changing, that is.
Category: Articles, Uncategorized
