We were standing about the funeral home parlor, my numerous Irish Catholic family gathered at the wake of my uncle in the mid-90s. He had died in a drunk driving accident at about the age of 30. To my mother, the second-oldest of 13 children, he was “one of the babies.” And I’ll never forget the priest encouraging us all to express our feelings about his death, and saying that it was okay to be flat-out pissed off, even if at God.

I know that I was feeling sadness more than anger at the time, but the irony in that permission struck me, then 20, as unique and bold.

Today I’m trying to process how I feel about Maple Leaf Foods CEO Michael McCain bashing the White House, and what it means for the greater meat industry. It surely isn’t every day that an industry executive enters the political fray, let alone expresses in a series of tweets on Twitter his anger at the president of the United States and his administration over their dealings in Iran.

Free speech is a beautiful thing, but the chief of Canada’s largest meat processing company, and a publicly traded one, alluding to President Trump as a “narcissist” doesn’t come without some risk. Sure enough, the company’s stock slipped after McCain’s digital diatribe, and social media was abuzz with calls for boycotts of his company’s products. That won’t be lost on shareholders.

Which brings to the fore the conflict between personal moral stances and shareholder primacy, the idea that the CEO of a publicly traded company’s highest purpose is to maximize profits for the company and its shareholders. We’ve seen CEOs in other industries go rogue and speak out on various political and social issues. Those in the meat industry, a powerful lobby in Washington, have shown more restraint.

But after his company colleague’s wife and 11-year-old son died in the wreckage of a Ukrainian passenger plane shot down by Iranian forces, McCain was “livid” and vented. He blamed Washington for the tragedy, which happened when Iran retaliated for the U.S assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, and he called U.S. involvement there ill-conceived and dangerous. Trump said the action was necessary to rid the world of one of its top terrorists and to ensure that Iran doesn’t obtain nuclear weapons.

I would say McCain’s choice of forum for the expression of his emotions was misguided. But I can at least appreciate the emotion of anger and respect his willingness to have expressed it.

The world is changing. Business is, too. The consuming public, with the powerful push of large investor bases, isn’t satisfied with product quality and price. They want to know what a company stands for. In fact, research conducted by the Center for Food Integrity found that communicating shared values is three to five times more important to earning consumer trust than sharing facts or demonstrating expertise.

Where do you chief executives stand on your environmental footprint? On labor and how to treat your people in order to retain it? On animal welfare? On relationships with producers? On transparency? On truth in labeling? On food safety? If you’re passionate about it, shout it out!

You don’t have to make your message political. You do have to make it emotional. Those crucial human connections, the ones generating sales, depend on it.

Editor's note: This article appeared as my editorial in the February issue of Meatingplace magazine.

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