Profits before Children

Profits before children? That doesn't sound right, does it? That's the funny thing about the truth. It doesn't always sound good.

Some people who see the harms that capitalism causes try to disrupt the system. Me? I’ve decided to go all in. We are a capitalist culture driven by profit, and that’s not the sword I’m going to fall on.

Instead of fighting this reality, what would happen if we accepted capitalism and wielded it to serve the good of humanity?

Who is getting paid? Who profits?

When I see a social challenge that exists in our community (and I see many), these are the questions that I ask myself. Who financially benefits because this problem exists?

Poverty. Who benefits from poverty? Whose paycheck is dependent on poverty existing? Somebody benefits, or it wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

Health and wellness. Who benefits from our illnesses? Whose paycheck is dependent on our unhealthy habits and behaviours? Someone benefits, or it wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

The more complex the answer, and the more people involved, the more difficult the solution will be.

Not because we can’t decide what to do, but because people will resist.

People are not good at giving up their income for the greater good. It boils down to some basic human needs. Income = safe. No income = danger.

When there are financial incentives for resolving a problem, believe this farmers wife when I say that the solution will be discovered.

I have the benefit of being married to a commercial chicken farmer, and so I know some things about farming that most people don’t know.

I’m all about sharing, so here is your agricultural social impact lesson for the day.

We buy chicks that are one-day old. Before we receive the one-day old chicks, we get the barn ready.

Getting the barn ready is an exercise in precision. And the preparations begin long before the chicks hatch.

First, we spread straw on the barn floor for bedding.

Farmer Tim wants the bedding to be perfect. He weighs bales, paces out the barn, spreads the bales with a pitchfork and then mows the straw until it is level and uniform.

Over the years he’s tried more straw, less straw, long straw, short straw, chopped straw. Always paying attention to the results… how do the birds grow in the various conditions?

If you are not in agriculture, you might be surprised how much time, effort and money, is spent studying the impact of these bedding details.

Once the bedding is satisfactory, then we put out the feed.

Access to feed during the first hours that the chick is in the barn will have an impact on their entire lives. (feel free to be curious about the parallel between chicks and human babies)

Studies have given us a formula to work with. 75g of feed per chick. To make sure that our brand-new day-old chicks have the best chance for growing into the highest quality bird, we lay out paper on the barn floor and then shovel out feed to cover the ideal amount of floor space.

When those little birds arrive, and take their first looks around, they will find food. Guaranteed.

Studies have also shown that water temperature makes a difference. Our drinker lines run through the barn, and we have the barn set to the ideal temperature of 32 degrees Celsius (imagine that on a day like today when it is -17 outside!). This means that the water, sitting in the water lines waiting to be discovered, gets warm.

So, Tim attaches a hose to the end of the water line and flushes the warm water down the drain so that those precious day-old birds will have nice cool water to help them wash down all the food that they’ve found.

Because water temperature makes a difference.

And so does the drinker line height. Too high is a problem, too low is a problem. Too much water pressure is a problem. Too little water pressure is a problem.

Tim checks the water consumption regularly and has an alarm system that calls him if the water consumption isn’t precisely what he expects it to be.

Talk about the details!

We haven’t even placed the birds in the barn yet, and already I’ve described years of trial, error, and research (and make no mistake, research costs $$).

On chick day, the heated truck with trays of freshly hatched chicks arrives at the farm. Our crew carries tray after tray after tray after tray of chicks into the barn. When they are all inside the lights are dimmed. Everyone gets to work.

Each box of 100 chicks is gently and quickly dumped. We get this done quickly because once the chicks acclimatize, they get curious and start roaming. This can make our work more challenging as we carry trays and move around the barn. The faster we finish, the better.

Once all the trays are emptied and returned to the chick truck, the crew leaves the pen and shares in some general chit chat out in the shop area.

But Tim has work to do. He’s back in the pen collecting sample chicks to weigh. This gives him a starting number to work with.

Over the next 5 weeks he’ll monitor and weigh the birds daily. If they don’t drink enough water, or eat enough food, he’ll investigate, figure out why and fix the problem.

5 weeks later, while the rest of the family is in bed sleeping, Tim will be greeting the catching crew and all those birds will be collected and shipped to a processing plant.

Tim waits anxiously for the email that will arrive later this day. What will his results be? How many grade A? How many condemns? Any sick birds? Any foot problems? What was the average weight?

All these details make a huge difference.

What kind of a difference you ask? What happens if the bedding wasn’t right? If the water wasn’t right? If there wasn’t enough feed? If there was the wrong kind of feed?

The difference will be in the size of the check.

The better the chickens, the bigger the paycheck.

Would anyone have done the research on bedding for a chicken flock if there was no money to be made?

Would we know what kind of results various water pressure has on the success of a bird if there was no money involved?

Who would fund the research?

Who would take the time to learn these details if there was no money involved?

Think about what we know about poverty. Here in Nova Scotia, we have failed to put a dent in child poverty.

In agriculture, we accept that the conditions and inputs make a difference. If the housing conditions aren’t right, the birds suffer. If there isn’t enough feed, the life of the bird is impacted.

Everyone involved in the food chain is financially motivated to learn these facts and apply them.

But somehow, when it comes to humanity, we have failed to create a system that motivates the community to take care of children.

In a flock, if one chicken is sick, it will affect all the birds. And this has a direct impact on someone’s paycheck.

In a community, if one child is hungry, it will affect the entire community. Whose paycheck will be reduced? If no one is financially motivated to resolve the problem, then there is a good chance that the problem will persist.

When Tim has a flock of birds and notices that their day-one weight is low, or they don’t eat or drink as much as he would expect, or their weight doesn’t increase as he would expect… do you know what he does?

First, he looks at all the conditions he’s had control over. If he doesn’t find any errors, then where did the problem come from?

That’s when he looks at the hens who laid the eggs. Were they young hens? Young hens don’t grow the best eggs.

Were they sick at some point in their lives? That can have an impact on the quality of the chicks we receive.

Was there a power outage? A feed shortage? Some anomaly in the hens’ lives that has led to chicks that don’t grow to their full potential?

Let’s look back at humanity for a moment.

The egg that became me, was inside my mom while she was inside my grandmother.

That means that the conditions my grandmother lived in are directly connected to my mother’s life and my life.

This has become somewhat accepted in our culture, at least verbally acknowledged.

But what are we doing about it?

Do all the children in my community have suitable housing? Are their living conditions the ideal temperature? Do they have the ideal amount of access to the right amount of nutrients?

No. They do not. And this doesn’t just affect this generation. This will have an impact on the next two generations. At minimum. When people throw around the word ‘inter-generational’, this is part of what we are talking about.

I’ve learned from agriculture that the smallest details can be measured and managed.

I’ve learned from humanity that we won’t treat ourselves with this kind of care and attention unless there is financial motivation.

I came across disturbing results in a study that investigated the financial cost of child abuse in Canada. I was shocked at the findings in the report, The Economic Costs and Consequences of Child Abuse in Canada (2003).

Canadians spend $15 billion dollars a year on child abuse. I learned once that a billion is beyond human comprehension. Our poor simple brains can not compute one billion. Yet we spend $15 billion dollars per year on child abuse.

If you are wondering how we can spend $15 billion dollars on child abuse and still have so much of it, I can tell you the answer.

We aren’t spending $15 billion dollars preventing child abuse. We are spending $15 billion dollars responding to it.

This means that there is a $15 billion dollar industry at stake. When I say that my mission is to eradicate child sexual abuse, I am threatening this industry.

Doctors, therapists, lawyers, judges, social workers, outreach workers, addiction support workers… all of these people are paid to respond to the impact of child abuse. They financially benefit from the existence of child abuse.

They aren’t paid to prevent it from happening.

We shouldn’t be surprised that this $15 billion dollar industry continues to flourish.

That’s why I created Priority Kids. Our business model helps disrupt this industry of abuse. We create jobs that depend on prevention. Our financial success depends on prevention. Our paychecks increase when more kids are protected.

Capitalism has a lot of faults. But we can accept some of its basic principles and wield it to do good.

You can help by normalizing and incentivizing prevention.

Normalizing prevention happens when you ask the question, ‘What do you have in place to protect children from sexual abuse?’ whenever you can.

It encourages people to think about prevention and to start looking for answers to the question.

Incentivizing means that you make it mandatory. People don’t take First Aid training because they want to. They take it because it is required for their job or program. People don’t take WHMIS because it is fun to memorize labels. They take it because it is mandatory.

Make child sexual abuse prevention training mandatory. Expect adults to be trained. If First Aid can be a requirement for looking after children, surely we can expect child sexual abuse prevention training to be a requirement.

Look around the community. Who benefits financially from keeping kids safe? Who gets a bigger paycheck because they’ve protected children? Who gets paid to prevent child sexual abuse?

As much as we all might agree (in principle) that prevention is important, the truth is our economy is built to respond, not prevent.

And it’s time for that to change.

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