YYZ LIVING Besides fashion, what are your passions? LW I’m very passionate about the future of our food systems and the inhumane treatment of animals on factory farms. It’s so important to me to know where my food comes from and what actually went into producing it. Everything we eat is part of a larger ecosystem and it takes very little to disrupt it. It’s important that we find a sustainable model that produces as much food as possible for our growing population. Where does your inspiration come from? I’m very inspired by the book Harvest for Hope by Jane Goodall. It describes the problems with our current method of monoculture farming and the resulting overuse of pesticides and genetically modified foods.
Liisa Winkler
Also, Eating Animals by Jonathan Saffron Foer—if I could make everyone in the world read one book, it might be this one. It really opens your eyes to the shocking truths of “intensive livestock operations” and what has to happen to produce the bacon you buy at the grocery store. Besides that, it’s a good read—well written, humorous, and unbiased. Has raising children changed the way you think of food? My children have made me more aware of what I eat. I want them to learn where food comes from by seeing it first hand, and to be able to show them a system of farming that is not inhumane to animals. The other day, my daughter told me that she didn’t believe in pigs anymore. After driving through the country for hours, we realized it was true—short of visiting a petting zoo, there were no pigs to show her. It’s sad that a pig should become a thing of fairytales. It makes me question what kind of world we’ll be leaving for our children when we’re gone. What about wearing fur when you model?
An Activist Abroad
Modeling is a job that requires me to wear things that I would not choose to wear in my personal life. For a while I decided not to wear fur but then wondered about the leather that I would be wearing. I decided that it’s my job to sell clothes, not to decide what other people should buy. If I were someone like Naomi Campbell, perhaps saying no to fur would make an impact, but I am not Naomi Campbell. The truth is, that if I did say no to a fur coat at a fashion show, they would just put it on a different model and, with or without me, the show would go on.
Raised in Belleville, Ontario, Liisa Winkler began modeling at age fifteen. Moving first to Australia before settling in New York, her image has graced the covers of Vogue, Flare, and Marie Claire.
What can we do to change? The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) has just released a report called What’s on Your Plate? The Hidden Cost of Industrial Animal Agriculture in Canada. It’s the first comprehensive report ever written on factory farming in Canada. It uncovers a wide range of problems that come from industrial animal farming, including air, water, and soil pollution; the destruction of rural communities; and the overuse of antibiotics in animal feed that contributes to the creation of antibiotic resistant diseases. The report makes many recommendations, any one of which would positively impact the way we eat and many of which have already been adopted in other parts of the world. For example, factory farms in Canada alone create 170 million tons of manure each year—equal to the waste of 2.4 billion people. There is currently little regulation of these byproducts and setting any sort of limit would hugely reduce Canada’s ecological footprint. One thing that everyone can do is practice “Meatless Mondays.” Canadians eat more than three times more meat than the recommended intake. Just one meat-free day per week would help immensely.
IV