This transcript is AI-generated and [lightly] edited by a human.

Karina Inkster:

You're listening to the No Bullshit Vegan Podcast, episode 164, president of The Humane League. Vicky Bond is here to discuss the organization's work and to dispel some animal welfare myths. While we're at it.

Karina Inkster:

Hey, welcome to the show. I'm Karina, your go-to no BS vegan fitness and nutrition coach. Welcome to the last episode of 2023! Whether you're a new or a longtime listener, thank you so much for tuning in and supporting the show. For something fun, I am doing a book giveaway. You can enter to win a signed copy of the vegan athlete or resistance band workouts. Your Choice, the Vegan Athlete is the second edition of my very first book called Vegan Vitality, and it contains over a hundred recipes as well as chapters on nutrition, meal prepping and myth busting. And of course, everyone's favorite topic of protein resistance band workouts shows you how to do 50 resistance band exercises and how to put them together into an effective workout program, and it's got lots of workout examples. To enter the giveaway, submit a star rating and quick review of this show on your podcast listening app of choice.

Take a screenshot and send it to me. Email it to me at karina [at] karinainkster.com. And that's it. Make sure you email me your screenshot before January 5th, as that's the day I'm going to draw a winner and I'll announce it on social media. So again, submit a short review of this podcast on whatever app you use to tune in. Take a screenshot either of the review before you submit it or the submission confirmation page and email it to me at karina [at] karinainkster.com before January 5th. Ratings and reviews are the best way to support this show and get it in front of new listeners, and you might win a book in the process. So how's that for a win-win. Thank you so much for your support. 

Introducing my guest today, Vicky Bond. Vicky is president of The Humane League, a global animal protection nonprofit that exists to end the abuse of animals raised for food.

She's also a veterinarian and an animal welfare scientist who has spent more than a decade advocating for animals. Before becoming president of The Humane League, Vicky led The Humane League, United Kingdom as managing director. Under Vicky's leadership, both The Humane League and The Humane League UK have directly made an impact on the world's largest food corporations, including PepsiCo, Kellogg's, Compass and Sodexo. The Humane League and The Humane League UK also work on policy to push for laws to end factory farming practices, including state bans like Prop 12 that ends cages for mother pigs while they're pregnant, calves, and laying hens. Vicky's favorite meal is vegan fish tacos from Seaco Catch and if she's making it vegan, mushroom and tofu ramen. Hope you enjoy our conversation.

Hi Vicky, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for speaking with me today.

Vicky Bond:

Thanks for having me. Really great to be here.

Karina Inkster:

I'm excited to learn about what The Humane League is, so let's just jump in right there. I also want to hear about your own vegan story, but let's talk about The Humane League because that's going to be a theme for our whole conversation, what it is, what it does, and maybe you can start things off with that.

Vicky Bond:

Thanks. So The Humane League is a global nonprofit organization working to end the abuse of animals raised for food. Billions of animals are kept in horrific conditions on farms in the US and around the world, and we campaign to hold companies accountable to end one of the worst forms of cruelty in their supply chains, battery cages for laying hens.

Karina Inkster:

Interesting. Okay, so it focuses on laying hens specifically, although, I've looked at your website and there's a lot of content there on just going plant-based overall and how animals are treated, not just hens, but how did that come to be as the focus?

Vicky Bond:

So we run a series of different campaigns. We do institutional change predominantly, which is our welfare campaigns to work to get hens out of cages. Also, we do work on improving the welfare of broiler chickens, all about supply chains in big corporations. We also do policy work, and that's both at state level and also now working with groups in different cities to get statewide bans on things. And then we also do advertise and encourage people to go plant-based to remove cruelty from their plates is to go plant-based.

Karina Inkster:

Right, and I do want to talk about that a little bit more too because that's one of the myths that we're going to address in our conversation, but I would love to hear your own plant-based story, your own vegan story. Not all the guests on the show are vegan, most of them are, but when they are, I like to ask how it came to be and if there was a catalyst, and what's the backstory?

Vicky Bond:

So I went vegetarian when I was 14, and that was very, I mean, I wanted to be vegetarian for a long time, and parents played into the myths of if you go vegetarian it will stunt your growth. And all these, I'm very tall, so it definitely hasn't done that. But yeah, so it was Christmas day, I saw a turkey sitting on the table and my uncle said, imagine the size of that turkey when it was alive. That was it. I was like, I'm done, I'm done. Here I am done. I already was done, but I was truly done and price that my parents, where my mom predominantly was cooking meals for us, and so it was like, look, I'll cook my own meals. I don't want to be part of this. So that's when I went vegetarian and then I went off to vet school, became a veterinarian, and in that time I got exposed to a lot more of the dairy industry and obviously laying hens and everything.

And I like to say it happened to vet school, but it didn't. I went to work at Compassionate World Farming and when I went there I was a researcher to start with and I was putting a lot of information together on this compendium for the organization and for people to read externally as well on the welfare issues. And I started with laying hens and as I was writing all these things about how hens, whether they're in cages or not, I suffer from these fractures of their bones and things. I was kind of like, I don't eat animals, but I'm still participating in this system. And so I realized that I needed to be vegan, and it was the first time I've really been exposed to many vegan people that I was one of two or three vegetarians in my year at vet school. That's not really predominantly vegetarianism.

Karina Inkster:

That's kind of surprising.

Vicky Bond:

Yeah, yeah. I was surprised when I got to vet school actually, to be honest. And then I think it's changed with time. I went to vet school quite a long time ago now. Right, fair enough. So I think when I've gone back and I've done some lectures there and things, people come forward and a lot more people come forward and say like, oh, so glad to hear you speak and everything else, which we didn't really have when we were in vet school. So yeah, so I realized early on that if I cared about animals, which I do deeply and loved animals, then I wouldn't be eating them or participating in anything that caused them pain and suffering.

Karina Inkster:

Makes complete sense. Very similar story for me, went vegetarian when I was 11, but it took five years to figure out that I was still supporting the dairy industry and the meat industry and everything that we've since learned. Of course. So how long has it been for you then?

Vicky Bond:

So it's been like 13 or 14 years. I don't know, something around that vegan. And then obviously since I was vegetarian was a long time ago.

Karina Inkster:

That's awesome. Well, thanks for sharing. So what does your day-to-day look like at this point? So you're a veterinarian, you're the president of The Humane League, I think there's also some research that you do right in animal welfare. Are these things all happening or is The Humane League kind of the main gig at this point? What does Vicky's day to day look like?

Vicky Bond:

Yeah, The Humane League is the entire gig at this point.

Karina Inkster:

Got it, okay.

Vicky Bond:

Very much so. Very much so. I left being a vet well over a decade ago now. Went into working, I realized I felt like I could make more impact working on things on a greater scale to make change than working with the individual animal in the moment. And very much feel that is very much the ethos of The Humane League as well as reducing the greatest amount suffering. And that's the work that we do is factory farming is one of the greatest forms of suffering on this planet for animals. And so it's important work that we're doing and that's why I've been working on ever since really.

Karina Inkster:

Makes complete sense. Well, let's talk about that a little bit. So one of the myths that we have on the table, I always ask my guests for input on what our discussion topics are going to be. One of the myths that we have is that the best way to improve the welfare of animals, specifically farmed animals, is to try to convince everybody to be vegan or to just stop using animal products completely. So why is that a myth? This is an interesting topic to me.

Vicky Bond:

It's a myth in the sense that society is deeply ingrained in eating meat and consuming animal products. And I think if anyone sits down at a dinner table with their family, if they're not vegetarian or vegan, they've been exposed to how deeply ingrained society is in this. And so that path to world where animals are not abused for food is a long path to get to and to sit here and just assume, well, I'm just going to work on people being vegan. And that's the only way that we get there, I think is a real risk of us not getting there. And so the work that we do is that incremental step-by-step change that is working towards that future. So we work on ending cages for laying hens as one of the main pieces of work that we do right now that we're focusing on. And we do that because it has some of the worst forms of suffering that any factory farmed animal can be exposed to for the longevity as well.

Their laying hens are put in cages, four or five birds in a metal cage for a year and a half of their short life, and that's where they are laying eggs every day at the expense of their body, causing them so much pain and suffering. So when we talk about going vegan, it's important to think there are steps there that people can take that have real meaning and change for animals without the world being vegan. So reducing the suffering of these animals, taking them out of cages and putting them into cage-free systems. There's been an organization called the Welfare Footprint who looked at that and they showed that reduced suffering by 60%, excuse me. And that was 7,000 hour reduction in pain and discomfort that those birds experience a reduction from going from cages to cage-free. So yeah, it's important to think about how do we get there on a step change and we can see where we might want that end point to be, but to get there, it's highly unlikely. I think we could say that it's going to be because we've changed every single person going vegan, and that's how we've got there. There needs to be societal change and institutional change. And so we're seeing that more and in certain places, we're definitely seeing take for January, that happens every January. Is anyone listening to this and thinking about it? Now's the time to be gearing up to get involved.

Karina Inkster:

Absolutely.

Vicky Bond:

We can do it any time of year now. But I think those changes we're seeing, you can go to restaurants now in there, plant-based options often on menus, so people are switching food out. And that's what I say to people, if it's too much, if it feels too much to you, start with just reducing one meal a day from what you were eating some meat. Dairy makes a huge difference over time, and if everyone did that, we just reduce how many animals we would have not no longer need to be slaughtered just by everyone reducing their meals down by even just a fifth of what they're consuming now, make a huge difference to animals. So we want to work on that step change and we want to help get animals out of these cages as quickly as possible. But we also recognize there is education to be done around eating and around reduction of these products too.

Karina Inkster:

And I think also we're on the same page that these things are not mutually exclusive. You can work on flexitarianism, or whatever you want to call it, and also work on getting people fully vegan. It doesn't have to be one or the other. And so I like that the approach is both at the same time.

Vicky Bond:

Yeah, absolutely. Completely agree.

Karina Inkster:

Well, let's talk about the laying hen specifically because I think there's this idea out there still. I mean, there's lots of ideas out there that are complete bullshit, but one of the ideas is that there is such a thing as a happy hen in our modern farming agricultural system. And sure, I have some people in my town who have five chickens in their backyard, but I don't think that's what we're talking about. We're talking about large-scale animal agriculture, and even within that, there's still this idea that, oh, well they're free range or they're not in cages, so they're happy, they're running around. There's this concept that they can be happy. What's the deal with this? It's a myth, right?

Vicky Bond:

I don't think it's a complete myth. I would say that the way that we look at it and the way that we're working is that you in a cage, there's no way of improving a cage to give it an animal any form of welfare, good welfare whatsoever. We need to end cages. That's why we work on the work we do. We know that reduces suffering greatly. Then you've got cage-free systems and they have much greater welfare potential. But what welfare potential you get out of them is dependent on the management, on the standards in place, on legislation in places and why that's all really important too, as part of this. So cage-free systems, barn systems, then you have barn with say an outdoor sheltered area called a veranda, or you have free range, you have organic. Some of those birds may actually have very good welfare, some may not, because there are thousands of birds in each of these systems.

And I think you're right to point out that this is not like a little bag. Once they're cage free, there's like 10 hens at each shed. That is not what's happening here. There's sort of 6,000, maybe even more in a shed. Their welfare is greatly improved. But there are welfare issues in cage-free systems, and we should not shy away from the fact that they exist. We should work towards creating systems that it continues to improve the welfare of these animals while eggs are being consumed. So there's things that producers can do that we see in certain countries like Germany that's very advanced, where they have included regulations to stop bee trimming. So in systems, they tend to take the tip of the bird's beak off so they stop pecking each other because they often get bored in these systems because as you can imagine, they're stuck in a shed all day.

So they peck each other and that's very painful and can actually lead to cannibalism. So these things, these exist in these cage-free systems, and we absolutely need to make sure that these systems continue to improve and improve welfare to maybe not get, I would be any system that has thousands of animals in you as a person, as a person looking at those animals cannot give each animal the dedication and care of knowing if they're sick or they need something more than they're getting. You can only do that if you have a backyard of five to 10 hens and each one and you name each one and their habits and they come and see you at a certain time of the day and they do blah, blah, blah, you know them. So when there's something wrong, if you have thousands of birds, even in organic systems with smaller like 1000, 2000 flocks, you're still not going to have a personal relationship enough with those birds that what's going on.

So yeah, when we talk about the happy hen myth, I think I agree that we're never going to get to a place where we have farms that have 10 birds that can supply eggs. So we do need to reduce our consumption. We do need to get, and we also need to work on these systems getting incrementally better over time as producers get used to them and they create systems that fit the bird, not make the bird fit the system, which is the modern way of farming is like make the bird fit the system, make the animal fit the system, put them in a cage, take off their beaks, do whatever it is that we need to do to make sure they can fit in the system. And it should not be that way, has to be that the system has to fit the animal. What do the animal need?

How can we provide for the animal when they're chicks and pulls, which is when they're younger, before they start laying eggs, how do we get them used to systems where they can navigate them really easily and they understand them so they don't get so many broken bones? Because when they're bigger and they're laying eggs and they go in these vast sheds, they don't know how to navigate around the shed, they bang into things and they end up breaking their keel bones on their chest. So there's things we can do that make massive difference to these animals that can make them happier, but they're happy end. There will be some, but chances are there's going to be others that need a lot more care and attention than they're going to get.

Karina Inkster:

That makes sense. Like most things, it's pretty nuanced. So does increasing the welfare of animals necessarily mean that we as a population need to decrease our consumption of animal products?

Vicky Bond:

We do need to decrease our consumption animal products. There's no getting away from it. We do need to make the systems better, but we have too many animals being produced on this planet for meat, for eggs, for dairy. It is impacting our climate, it's impacting the environment, it's impacting biodiversity. We have to reduce the number of animals at the same time as improving welfare.

Karina Inkster:

I think a lot of folks who are not, maybe not yet, but let's just say not for now on the vegan spectrum, do care to some extent about animal welfare. You see all these people who are specifically looking for local meats or the hens that they know from the neighbor down the street that's laying eggs or what have you. So I'm not saying that all meat eaters care about ethics, but some of them do. And so maybe this whole concept of, well, if you reduce your intake and where your products are coming from, at least it's a less worst option, I suppose. I mean, there's no perfect solution and there never is. But it kind of sounds like a lot of these ways of increasing animal welfare means lower production or just fewer animals on a farm. At least that's the sense that I'm getting, which then necessarily means that we need to decrease our intake of those products.

Vicky Bond:

Yeah, absolutely. When we talk about broiler chickens, for instance, chickens reared for meat called broilers in the industry, 9 billion chickens in the US alone are slaughtered every year for 9 billion. It's unfathomable amount of animals just in the US alone. And these birds do not have enough space to move. They do not have enough space to even lie comfortably as they get bigger because there's so many birds in that shed and we're talking like 30 or 40,000 birds in a single barn shed. So we need them to have more space. It's not acceptable, and we're pushing for that. We have something called the best gene commitment, which is working to get companies to commit to higher welfare standards, including more space. But absolutely, we can't have 9 billion chickens being slaughtered. That has to be reduced. And I think there's a recognition coming from the industry. There's a recognition at the COP right now. They're now serving partly plant-based there now like two thirds or something.

Karina Inkster:

Well, they're moving in the right direction.

Vicky Bond:

Exactly the right direction.

Vicky Bond:

But I do think we are seeing that real shift in institutions and corporations where they're like, oh, we see what you're talking about. I've been doing this for whatever a decade now. And when I started, I think there was a lot more denial in those organizations, corporations where they're like, oh, no, status quo is fine. I don't think anyone thinks the status quo is good now.

Karina Inkster:

Well, that's an interesting development. So how does The Humane League factor in? What are the logistics? How do you go about some of these changes?

Vicky Bond:

That's a great question. So we work with companies to improve their welfare standards, and then if they don't work with us, we campaign against those companies to improve those welfare standards. Interesting. Yes. And it's interesting that you said about when you ask general people what do they think about welfare? We have just released our report on global restaurants. Within that report, we showed that there's been a survey recently done across 14 different countries, and we're talking like US, UK, but then also Nigeria and Thailand and Malaysia and Chile and Brazil and others. There's 14 countries. Three quarters of people said they cared about the welfare of how those farmed animals are reared. So people do care about this. And so we just released this report to highlight companies that either doing well because we get companies to commit to these welfare standards to meet them by a certain time.

So in the case of laying hens to go cage free by 2025, we have big companies doing this work, and there's ones that are being successful and reporting on that. And those companies are like famous brands, yum. Brands shown like KFC, pizza, Hutt, those kind of name brands, restaurant brands, international. They're reporting on their progress. They're heading towards their timeline. And then we have the laggards who are not reporting, not making the progress they need to be doing and have made this public commitment to their consumers, to their customers and aren't meeting that. So those companies we're calling on to make progress to start reporting publicly on this because it's important and this restaurant guide is available for anyone who wants to go on a website and see it. And if you want to make sure you're not supporting those companies that are really falling behind on their commitments, we as activists like to call out these companies when they are falling behind on their stat, on their commitments they've made to the public and really letting animals down, and it's a lot of animal cruelty that they're continuing in their supply chains unnecessarily.

Karina Inkster:

Interesting. This sounds like a good resource. Is this related to the Roast campaign? Is that all kind of one and same?

Vicky Bond:

That's right. So there's the report highlights, the people that are going well, companies are going well, and the ones that are lagging, and then the restaurant roast campaign is to restaurant roast those companies. So inspire brands, focus brands that are not making progress on these commitments.

Karina Inkster:

That makes sense. Now The Humane League has worked with, you mentioned big name brands and I think that includes Kellogg's and PepsiCo. What kind of work has been done with these really large scale companies?

Vicky Bond:

So we work with those companies to make their global commitments to go cage free. So they will report maybe on certain parts or typically they started with commitments maybe in Europe or in the us. And we want those commitments to be global. They're a global company and their standards should be across the world and not just in certain countries. We will work with those companies on like, okay, you've made it in this country, in this country, now we want to see it in this region and this region and work with them on that.

Karina Inkster:

Right. Wow, that's really cool. So as an individual, not someone who is working through The Humane League, but someone who might be visiting the website, what can I do? What can I do that will have an impact via your organization?

Vicky Bond:

So yeah, you can go to our website and go to get involved, and there you will find you can sign up to our Fast Action Network. So our Fast Action Network is where you sign up and you'll get a message every day, every couple of days, which has some little actions that you can take online Digital actions, which is either to email an executive or write something on social media page. This is how we create this pressure on companies to make progress. Because when they hear from consumers, when they hear from their customers, they make this progress when they're kind of shamed on their social media platforms for the lack of progress they're making, they suddenly want to make more progress quickly so that they are not being shown and shone a light on for what they're doing. So you can get involved there by signing up to Facet net Fast Action Network. And then also we have a volunteering program if you wants to get more involved, we have volunteering you can get involved with, and you can also donate to us because we just did a recent assessment and for just over $2.50, you can save a hen from a cage. So even better, right now between now and Christmas, we have a match donor who will double match your donations to anything you would give. They will match again, making it twice as effective too.

Karina Inkster:

Interesting. And you have a store online as well where presumably purchases there will benefit the organization?

Vicky Bond:

Yeah, absolutely. So we also have a holiday gift store. Thank you for reminding me of that. It's a holidays I need to remember. It's sneaks up for me very quickly. We have a holiday store, you've got merchandise there where you can buy things, buy gifts for your loved ones, it's holiday season and all that. Their profits will go to HL as well.

Karina Inkster:

Amazing. So where do you see things going, let's say in the next five years? You mentioned 2025 as a potential kind of goalpost for cage-free hens, but on a larger scale or further down the road, where do you see some of these changes happening and what do you think realistically will happen in five years?

Vicky Bond:

In five years’ time, I think we'll have the majority of hens out of cages in the US. I think we'll have in Europe a similar, I mean we already have the majority in the sense of over around 60% in Europe, cage free here in the US since we started working on this, we've got up to 40% cage free from sort of 6 or 7% in the US to 40%.

Karina Inkster:

Oh, wow. That's a big difference.

Vicky Bond:

Yeah. Yeah. So this is the corporate work that we've been doing alongside other organizations and also the legislative pushes for statewide bans as well on cages. So in Europe, I think we'll see a similar thing where we'll see more like the vast majority be cage-free. So they're already at kind of 60 ish, 60 ish percent, and they've pushed that up more like to 80% in the next five years. I think we will see more bans in states here in the US for cages and also hopefully in Europe, in European countries. The European Commission had said they were going to ban cages by 2027. They looked to be rolling back on that, which is really, really sad. That looked like great progress for animals. But even if they do roll back on that, I mean hope they don't, country by country is pushing for legislation too.

So THL in the UK is working on pushing for legislation to end hens and cages and certain other countries have already got that Germany and Austria and places. So there's real progress that can be made there on our theory of change is to get corporations to commit and then solidify that with legislation so that it's in law, all the systems cage free. So I think in the next five years, that's where we'll see the progress going, shifting to the majority and on a global scale. So we started the open wing alliance, which brings together organizations from around the world to end cages worldwide. And we have over a hundred organizations in over 70 countries. We have these global commitments from companies and then we also have organizations working there, individual companies. Some have already just started, some have been doing it for four or five years, some longer. And we're starting to see that progress there in those countries where they're starting to get commitments in places in Asia where those commitments are now getting to bigger companies and becoming more of the majority of companies being committed. So I think over the next five years we'll just continue to see that trend of countries around the world getting more corporate commitments as well.

Karina Inkster:

All moving in the right direction at the same time as hopefully having more people who are reducing but also going completely vegan. I mean we as vegans of course, want the whole world to go vegan, but we're also realistic at the same time.

Vicky Bond:

Yeah, totally. I'm really inspired by the groups that we work with, the Wing Alliance. They're often working in countries that have had no groups working whatsoever on farmed animal welfare, and they're making huge strides in their countries. It's amazing to see. And I think coming from the UK or working here in the US where we've had the movement for so many years, it's very inspiring to see these organizations cropping up now in countries that have not been doing any farm animal work before. Gives me a lot of hope.

Karina Inkster:

Well, I mean that's basically what fuels all of us, isn't it? This sense of hope. I think one of my podcast guests, who was it? It might've been Queer Brown Vegan on Instagram, he said, evidence-based hope. I'm like, that's actually a really good term. Evidence-based hope.

Vicky Bond:

Yeah, love it.

Karina Inkster:

I assume that's what we both have. Do you feel like the cage-free is going to be, or is currently a marketing term kind of like plant-based and vegan is becoming, it kind of seems like back in the day I went vegan 21 years ago, almost no one even knew what vegan was. They used to call it vegan and they're like, oh, can you have this chicken salad? Or Oh, can you have this caesar salad, whatever. Now it's almost a marketing term where people want their product to be certified vegan because they know that there's a market for it. Is it kind of similar with cage-free or free range going to be used as a marketing term? I mean I think it kind of already is.

Vicky Bond:

Yeah, I think it already is in a lot of places. Certainly coming back to the UK, I think cage free because in Europe we banned battery cages but allowed enriched cages.

Karina Inkster:

What does that mean? What's an enriched cage?

Vicky Bond:

What it's meant to be is it's a larger cage. It's a large cage. It holds typically 60 to 80 hens. It has perches in, it still has a wire bottom, so they don't have any nice surface to put their feet on, but it has these perches and it has a slightly enclosed area where they can lay an egg, but it's really just like a flap down from the cage. So it provides a little bit more area and space and they can actually open their wings and they can perch a little bit, which they're highly motivated to do. There's meant to be a little scratching area that's really barely ever used. And when they did any research on it showed there was lots of competition and birds never actually got to fulfill the dust bathing behavior that they really desire.

So it really confused consumers. So for a lot of time people are like, well, cages are already banned. It's like no cages are not banned, enriched cages exist. So it really gave the industry a leg up to think, oh, consumers think that the bad things are gone and we're all good now. And it's like, no, that's not the case. So cage free became a marketing tool there where we really had to push no to be cage free, not enrich cages. And I see it here in the US too. I think companies put cage free, put cage free on their products where they have eggs or mayonnaise in the brackets you'll see eggs cage free in the brackets. Helmann's mayonnaise do that very well. So I think it has become a term, I hope it maintains that and free range as well. I don't know how that's sort of used, but it's not very easy to come by, I think in the US so much.

Karina Inkster:

Right. That makes sense. Well, most of our listeners are somewhere on the plant-based spectrum, of course, hence listening to a vegan podcast. But some are in the early stages, they're just kind of getting their feet wet doing some research. So do you have any tips for folks if they're currently not, but they want to be where to start and any sort of mindset or practical tips for them?

Vicky Bond:

Yeah, I mean we have a Go Veg area on our site so you can learn lots of recipes and there's advice there. We've got our team put out their favorite recipes of things that are nice and easy to make, which is always important. I think having a really complex recipe is very daunting the best of times. One of the things that I think and well, I say to people, it's just be kind to yourself. This is not, you want to be in it for the long haul. So don't think like, oh, I slipped up. I had some milk or something. I'm no longer vegan. That's not true. You're doing exponentially more than the average person is doing. You're vegan and you should take, be kind to yourself as you would be to animals and be like, okay, I'm trying my best. Keep going. Don't just, it's not an all or nothing.

Don't be black and white about it. I think it's really important to just reduce as you can. If you end up going to your ants and she gives you biscuits and you feel you can say no, don't feel you've let down the whole of the vegan world by eating that biscuit, you need to do what you need to do in that moment and time. It will get, I promise, the one thing I can promise is it gets easier as time goes on. And so how you feel now about it and how you'll feel in a year will be very different. And for some people it's super easy to do it overnight and nothing doesn't matter. For other people, it's like takes years to ease themselves in, but then they're in it for the long haul and that's what matters.

Karina Inkster:

Well, that's exactly what matters. Yeah, that's a good point. Well, Vicky, is there anything that we've missed, anything on Humane League? Any important points that we haven't touched on?

Vicky Bond:

I mean, just really welcome you coming to visit our website and just review things, how to get involved. There's always something for everyone. So hopefully you can find either a gift for a loved one or donate to us or get involved with our Fast section network. That'd be wonderful.

Karina Inkster:

Amazing. Well, Vicky, so great to speak with you. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Vicky Bond:

Thank you so much for having me. It's been lovely.

Karina Inkster:

Vicky, thank you again for joining me. Check out our show notes at nobullshitvegan.com/164 for direct links to The Humane League and their campaigns. 

Don't forget to enter my book giveaway by reviewing this podcast and sending me a screenshot. My email is karina [at] karinainkster.com. Wishing you all the best for an amazing 2024, and thank you so much for tuning in.