With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1081341
MARCH 2019 BCBUSINESS 13 ADAM BLASBERG E very so often, Steve Easterbrook's roosters, who act as sentinels for his thousands of brown hens, mistake a plane descending into nearby Vancouver Interna- tional Airport for a predatory hawk or eagle. The warning squawks send the hens scurrying back into the barn, their dainty clawed feet clicking like rain on the hard ground. Once the per- ceived danger is past, the chickens re-emerge to continue foraging in the fenced, six- acre enclosure of pasture grass that includes rye and clover. Their day is busy: pecking at the ground, gulping water from puddles, chatting in low- throated chortles and dust- bathing in hollows. "You can tell the birds are really enjoying it," Easterbrook says. Lean and grizzled, the 62-year-old has been produc- ing organic free-range chickens in B.C. since 1994. "I've always loved birds," says Easterbrook, who began his Œrst, modest, backyard free-range opera- tion while a boy. "I can look at a bird and know if it is feeling happy or healthy or sick." Easterbrook's facility, Rabbit River Farms in Rich- mond, houses up to 7,000 hens that lay about 175,000 dozen eggs a year. The farm is SPCA-certiŒed, so it's audited annually to ensure that it meets higher standards of care. Easterbrook's assiduous husbandry starts when the birds Œrst arrive as pullets— hens on the cusp of adulthood, not quite mature enough to lay eggs. He habituates them to the barn that will be their home until they're slaughtered at 72 weeks of age, when egg production slows. Socially complex, the hens Œnd friends and establish what are known in the business as neighbourhoods. They're trained to come in at night, when they Œnd a perch to sleep on. Unable to go outside dur- ing cold, rainy B.C. winters, the chickens live under a translu- cent roof that lets in daylight, with enough space, food and drink to support a "normal so- cial order," Easterbrook says. "I believe in giving animals as good a life as possible." Thanks to the care that the birds receive and the qual- ity of their organic feed, Rabbit River Farms eggs are premium- priced in grocery stores—and gobbled up by discerning con- sumers. Grocers make a higher A Good Egg As public concern for the welfare of farm animals grows, will consumers put their money where their mouths are? by Roberta Staley FARMING ( the informer ) O N T H E R ADA R CHANGING TASTES In a recent Dalhousie University survey of about 1,000 Canadians, here's how British Colum- bians stacked up against their peers in other regions when it comes to reducing or eliminating meat consumption HOME TO ROOST Steve Easterbrook tries to give chickens at Richmond's Rabbit River Farms a good life SOURCE: PLANT-BASED DIETING AND MEAT ATTACHMENT: PRO- TEIN WARS AND THE CHANG- ING CANADIAN CONSUMER, DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY n B.C. n PRAIRIES n ONTARIO n QUEBEC n ATANTIC CANADA 63% 42% of vegans in the Dalhousie survey were under 38– millennial and generation Y of flexitarians– those who opt for a plant-based diet that includes little meat–were baby boomers 15% 9% 15% 46% 13%