Changemakers: Vicky Bond and David Coman-Hidy

Dave: Vicky, I personally could not be more thrilled that you are leading THL into a new chapter. Can you start off by sharing how you became an animal advocate in the first place?

Vicky: Oh, thank you Dave! Let’s see, as a child, I always loved animals. And, of course, if you love animals as a child, you pretty much navigate towards being a veterinarian. That was all I wanted to do. And I did become a vet! But yes, I loved animals—and I loved helping animals. We had a little cat who was once a stray. She was very sweet—she used to sleep in my bed with me, and I loved her dearly. I’ve always just had a really strong affinity for animals and wanted to help them. That was really all I cared about: how could I help animals?

And then, I gave up eating meat. I was 14 at the time, and it was on Christmas Day—much to my mother’s dismay. I just couldn’t do it anymore. Later on, when I started working in the animal advocacy movement, I became vegan—just over ten years ago now. I remember when I was in vet school, very few people were vegetarian, let alone vegan. And when I left school and started working in advocacy, I was working to support egg-laying hens specifically. So I knew all these things chicks being macerated and hens’ bones being broken in factory farms, so I was like, what am I doing? The reason I’m not eating meat is because I care about animals. So if I care about them, then I should probably stop eating eggs and dairy as well. And that’s when I became vegan.

Dave: You are an animal lover and an animal welfare scientist—can you talk about what it was like going to vet school?

Vicky: In the UK, when you go to vet school, you study all different types of species, including farmed animals, so to get in, you needed to have a lot of work experience. I worked at a vet clinic from the age of 14. It was a job after school, and I worked as a receptionist and as an anesthetist, which was a great way to experience the veterinary profession.

But I also needed to get on-farm practice. The first farm I went to was actually a dairy farm. I was shocked by some of the things that I saw on that farm, even though that was, to be honest, probably one of the best farms I've ever been on—I just didn't know that at the time. It was a fourth generation dairy farm at that point, and it was a small dairy farm with a herd of 200 cows who the farmer, Daniel, knew by name. As a first experience at a farm, it was really good and really nice. But I still remember the first moment I really realized: this is not okay.

This memory is about the trauma of birth. The boy cows are used for meat, or they’re shot. In order to rear them for meat, you have to use a much beefier breed, often a Belgian Blue, which is very susceptible to something called “double muscling disease.” But, often what happens is, there are Holstein Friesian mother cows, which are those black and white cows, and their pelvises are made for bringing out Holstein Friesian calves—but instead they’re bred to be bringing out a much, much bigger Belgian Blue calf. Unfortunately, they often need a lot of help, and their pelvises can become so badly damaged that they can’t walk on their legs because of nerve damage in the pelvis. They do recover over time, but it was often a very traumatic birth. And the trauma didn’t end there, because the calf was immediately taken away from his mother.

I was just horrified. I was probably about 16 or 17 at the time. And I just really hadn’t contemplated it—hearing the bleating of the calf and the bleating of the mother. They take the calf away, and the mother immediately follows, trying to catch the calf. Then the calf gets put in a pen, and the mother just stands at the gate, bleating. She would stand there for 24 hours, just calling out, and the calf is responding. But they can’t get to each other. It’s a very emotional time. You can see she’s extremely distressed. The calf is extremely distressed. They’ve gotten used to what their mother sounds like—like when you talk to a baby in the womb. They know what their mother sounds like. We even know that with chickens as well—that the chicks know the little noises the hen makes. So they know each other already, the moment they come out. And you can just see the distress of both of them. All the calf wants is to be fed and groomed by the mother. Typically, she’d be cleaning the calf, but she doesn’t get that chance. And typically, the calf gets milk immediately, but that doesn’t happen. It’s very emotional. If she was a person, they’d be screaming the same: bring me back my child.

You become desensitized as a farmer. But I was very traumatized from that event. I remember phoning my father and saying, “I didn’t realize this is what a dairy farm was like.” And, actually, my father and grandfather were on dairy farms. My grandfather had a dairy farm, and it’s taken him a number of years to come around, but he’s also no longer consuming dairy or meat.

Anyways, I always remember that moment. Even when I got to vet school, and even when I left vet school, I’ve never forgotten that first dairy cow and her calf. It very much meant I wanted to fight for animals and end the abuse of animals raised for food, which is what we do. There have just been numerous times where I can’t quite believe this is what we do to animals.

Dave: Wow, that’s an incredible story, Vicky. Thank you for sharing that memory. This might be the perfect time to ask: how did you end up at THL?

Vicky: Well, I ended up at THL after meeting you at a sentience conference in Berlin, where I was living at the time. I used to work for another animal advocacy organization—across Europe and in some parts of Africa—where we collaborated with food businesses to improve animal welfare in their supply chains. But then I met you, and you introduced me to The Humane League, which was just starting up in the UK, and you asked, would I be interested? And I very much was!

I remember I was really excited about the approach THL took: being very fierce with companies. THL didn’t just go to companies and ask them nicely to create change for animals. THL told them, we will campaign, and we will make the public aware of these practices you are doing. I really liked that. I felt that I had gotten to a point in my work with companies where I wasn’t able to make progress without that kind of push—of fear—that the public might be made of what they’re doing in their supply chains.

I mean, the great thing about corporate outreach is that you meet people, and you can talk to them about why they should care about farmed animal welfare and why this is a problem. Often, people don’t know, and when they do know, they want to do something about it. In my experience, a lot of companies do want to do something about it. It’s really valuable to always try to work with companies, whenever you can, because it’ll be far faster work—for the animals—to have these conversations proactively.

But, of course, there are those companies that—just simply—are unwilling to make the progress that’s needed. So that’s when we campaign. I think that probably very few executives, if any, have ever walked into a slaughterhouse or walked onto a factory farm. I think if they did, they would probably have a very different opinion of what they need to change in their supply chains. And, to be honest with you, what I’ve learned is that the people who work in those companies—they want progress, too. They want to be able to do this, but it’s their boss’s boss’s boss saying, “No.” And that boss’s boss’s boss will say, “Yes,” when they realize there’s a lot of bad publicity in not caring and refusing to create change. That’s why we know campaigning works. Because it’s bad publicity. The reality is that these systems should not exist for animals. And anyone in their right mind would not agree to this being a good system for animals. A system that is not about living beings. A system that is not about caring for animals or even about rearing animals. It is about commodities, and how much chicken breast people can make, and what profit they can make. I’m just so proud to work for THL and fight to end that system worldwide.

Dave: I couldn’t agree with you more. So, when it comes to your work with THL, can you talk about how it feels to be moving from your work with THL UK to the US team?

Vicky: So, at THL UK, I first started off in corporate campaigning. I met with the companies, and Pru Elliott worked as a campaigner. It was just the two of us, and then we grew the organization to six members, and then I became the Managing Director, and now we’ve grown to nearly 30 members of staff in the UK. I really feel that it’s the perfect time for someone to come in with a fresh pair of eyes, with a wealth of campaign experience, to take us to the next level when it comes to pushing for animal protection legislation in the UK, which is—so far—going really, really well.

And now, in getting to be that fresh pair of eyes for the US team, I just feel very fortunate. I’ve been working with the US team over the years, but I still need to get to know the team a lot better than I do, and I’m really looking forward to that.

Dave, I would love to hear about your time working with the US team. Do you have any favorite memories?

Dave: There are so many that stand out to me over the years. I have such fond—perhaps nostalgic!—memories of traveling around on the Warped Tour, a grassroots music festival, doing outreach in our early days. Sleeping on floors, eating beans out of the can, driving countless miles each day. Nothing bonds you together with your fellow activists like that kind of intense experience. I also really loved my time organizing in the Boston area, working with students to carry out campaigns on their campuses, speaking in high schools, and building a local community of volunteers. And, in more recent years, I’ve loved all of our staff retreats and the Open Wing Alliance summits—it’s been an incredible experience meeting so many animal advocates from all around the world. I’ve gained so much from the time I’ve spent learning from our international colleagues, and I think that those relationships and inspirational stories have been a big part of what has kept my passion for activism alive.

I do have one standout memory from early days, during my second year working at THL. I'd been campaigning in Boston to get all the local universities to go cage-free. I was working with a great student on the Harvard campaign, one of the schools that hadn’t committed yet. Obviously, it was a big, important one, and the campaign had lasted for over a year. We were in month 13, and every other local campaign had lasted only a few months. I was still a pretty novice activist, and I remember feeling really defeated. I was thinking to myself that “this is it, I'm never going to win, we're never gonna be able to move past this.” But thanks to hard work on some last-ditch-effort tactics—like reaching out to some of Harvard’s biggest donors—we had an unexpected breakthrough, and we suddenly won the campaign! I remember getting the phone call from our student at Harvard to tell us that the school had made the cage-free policy, and just feeling this euphoric happiness that we finally did it. I called my girlfriend Anna, now my wife, and I said, “Let's meet at the Middle East,” the bar down the street in Cambridge. When I opened my door to walk outside, like magic, right on the sidewalk in front of the apartment was a crisp twenty dollar bill—and back then that was a big deal for me!—so we went and brought celebratory drinks with that twenty dollars. I’ll never forget how that felt.

Vicky: Wow, I love hearing about the early days. You’ve really seen THL from the ground up. What do you think has changed? I’m talking about THL—but also the movement in general.

Dave: It’s hard to know where to get started with this question because so much has changed in the last decade. Big picture—for the issues that we’ve been working on like the cage-free campaign—we’ve gone from getting individual college campuses to commit to cage-free to getting global commitments from some of the largest food companies in the world. There are now nine states that have banned cages, and Prop 12 is in effect in California. We’re up to over 33% cage-free in the US. It was just a few percentage points ten years ago.

And this success is reflected in other animal organizations. The Humane League has gone from a handful of activists when I started to well over 100 across many countries. It’s a similar story for our friends at Mercy for Animals, Animal Equality, Anima International, and more. We’ve seen more and more mainstream foundations enter our space, as well as talent coming to work at our organizations from other cause areas or even private sector companies. This growth has been incredibly exciting, but it’s also brought many challenges as organizations have doubled, tripled, or more in a matter of years. The animal movement in the US has had to adjust its culture and mindset to adapt to larger, international organizations.

Perhaps the most exciting development has been the increased cooperation that we see in the movement, especially across borders. The fact that the Open Wing Alliance has nearly 100 members around the world working on coordinated campaigns is just amazing, and the campaigns that those groups are winning is a great example of what’s possible when we work together and pool our resources. There was a time not that long ago when many of us in the US only had a few friends at international groups who we checked in with infrequently. Now we’re in near-constant communication and consistently working together and learning from each other.

For me, it’s the most exciting time to be part of the movement yet: we have more resources, more great people, and more power than ever before. We have a very long way to go, but I would not have believed you ten years ago if you told me that we would be in the position we are in today.

So, it doesn’t have to be ten whole years into the future—but what are you looking forward to, Vicky?

Vicky: Well, in terms of looking to the future for THL, we’re just beginning with public policy that is super, super exciting. Gabriel WIldgen is growing that department quite quickly so we can start doing work much like the Open Wing Alliance—uplifting activists on the ground through grassroots networks. We want to do the same, but in different states in the US, so we can push for better legislation at the state level. That’s really exciting work.

And then, more broadly, when we look at the time frames of these welfare commitments that we’ve gotten from companies—there are like hundreds of commitments that we’ve gotten, for broiler chickens and for laying hens—and what’s great is that we’re seeing the size of the cage-free flock going up month on month, year on year, percentage-wise. We really need to start seeing that progress for broiler chickens as well. So what it really comes down to is that we need to see accountability. We need to start seeing companies transitioning to improve their housing systems for chickens raised for meat, while also making sure that these companies continue to do the work for laying hens as well. So that is all really exciting. Looking forward into the future, we’re starting to shift away from getting more and more welfare commitments—you know, policies and statements and promises—and we’re shifting much more towards accountability, to ensure the policies actually get set into motion to create real change for animals.

Of course, at THL, we’ve also got an amazing global program collaborating across nine different countries—not just the UK and the US but also Brazil and Hong Kong and Kenya—and that is going to keep pushing for those global commitments from companies so we can end cages for hens worldwide. That is so, so impactful. Continuing that work, and collaborating with groups, and really learning from each other is so key.

You know, THL has always been seen as an organization not to mess with. THL comes in as the organization that shines a light on the problems. If there’s a will, there’s a way. And that goes for us, but it also goes for corporations. Because if a company really wants to do something—remember we’re talking about multinational companies making billions every year—they can do it. So, the reality is, we just shine a light on what they need to do—for the animals.

David Coman-Hidy served as President of The Humane League from 2013 to 2022, spearheading strategic and programmatic efforts to end the abuse of animals raised for food. Under his leadership, THL has grown into an international presence with staff spanning from Atlanta to Tokyo—winning hundreds of campaigns against some of the largest food corporations in the world and reaching millions of people each year with a message of compassion for farm animals. David has spoken on factory farming and effective advocacy at conferences and on campuses across the country. He has advised dozens of successful campaigns, and his work has been covered by the Washington Post, Wired, National Geographic, and more.

Vicky Bond is President of The Humane League. Vicky graduated with distinction in Veterinary Science from Liverpool University and holds a Masters in Environment Development and Policy from Sussex University. Using her veterinary degree and experience, Vicky has dedicated her career to reducing the suffering of animals on factory farms and has persuaded major food companies to change their animal welfare policies in order to eradicate the worst forms of cruelty. She served as Managing Director of The Humane League UK from 2017 to 2022, leading the team in getting big businesses to commit to welfare policies, and working closely with the Open Wing Alliance to end the abuse of chickens worldwide.