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Food safety isn’t just a job or a matter of public health – it’s a constant global mission, a commitment to basic human needs. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the challenges facing our food systems, but collaboration is key to progress.
Hear the story of one man who transformed personal struggle into a powerful force for good, creating a genuinely impactful global movement. It takes every one of us to make a real difference.
Former chef Niall Harbison found his calling in rescuing Thailand’s street dogs. His organisation, Happy Doggo, now cares for thousands annually. His journey, chronicled in “Hope,” ignited a movement of compassion, proving that even small acts of kindness can transform lives – both canine and human.
Ahead of his keynote session in Dublin, access Niall’s interview below and discover an inspiring story of turning personal struggle into compassionate action, changing lives one dog at a time!
“What sparked your passion for rescuing street dogs?”
My passion for this project of saving street dogs in Thailand really just started from feeding the first dog. The first dog was called Lucky. She was on my way home from playing football, and I saw her on the streets. I stopped at the shop and bought her a little bit of food. It was one dog, and I always get people messaging me about how they can get started, and that’s really how you get started:
Just do one small thing.
That’s grown into a place now where we feed 1000 dogs, where we sterilize 5000 dogs every month, where we re-home dozens of dogs a year. So, to start something amazing, you just need to take that first little step. I never really realised this would have such a huge global impact. And we’re definitely thinking big, and we’re trying to grow as fast as we can because the dogs need our help so much. To say that we would strategically think that we were going to be here in three years, I would love to have thought that we would, but we’ve exceeded all expectations in terms of how fast we’ve grown and how much, how many dogs like Big Mac here that we can save. It’s been fast growth, but there’s so much more left to do.
One person can have a global impact, but you need to also build a world-class team, which we’re in the process of doing.
“Creating a healthier, safer environment for animals and humans?”
One thing that’s really important to me is how humans and animals live together. We share this planet, and we have to do it as safely as we possibly can. Big Mac, here is a really good example. He used to live on the streets. He’s reached the latter years of his life. Now, he wouldn’t always have been welcome wherever he went.
What we need to do is find ways for humans and animals to live in harmony and do so safely. It’s not just a case of saving street dogs, which we definitely will do, and we continue to do it on a daily basis, but it’s also finding ways for street dogs to integrate into the community and improve the lives of humans who live around street dogs. That’s by creating a safe environment and nice places for dogs to live.
“Collaboration is key to solving global problems?”
One thing that I learned very early on was that I wasn’t going to be able to do much on my own. The best way to fix huge global problems or even small local problems is through collaboration. I’m very lucky that we’ve partnered with 10 organisations across Southeast Asia, which we help fund. We also have a growing team, both here in Thailand, in the UK and America. To save millions of street dogs over the course of my lifetime, which is the plan, we need a large team and a large amount of collaboration. And then, we need to ensure that stakeholders from local Thai people on the ground who interact with dogs, donors from around the world, and organisations that we work with are all doing so as part of one big, smooth alliance, which is being built from the very ground up.
We’re making good progress, and that collaboration is why we’ve been able to help so many dogs at scale.
“Can one person make a difference?”
One of the biggest things I think, in the world, and it’s true for me as well, is that it can seem very hard to make a difference.
If I look around at plastic on beaches, street dogs, global warming, whatever the challenge is, it can feel massively insurmountable and very hard to tackle.
What I want to share is that one person can make a difference. Street dogs: there are 500 million of them in the world. It would be very easy to just walk away and say, I can’t do it, or I can only hope to help five or 10 in my local area.
I want to try and share a message that shows you that one single individual might be a person who has just come out of college, it could be somebody working in a large corporation, or it could be somebody who’s dedicated their whole life to it can make a huge difference.
I’m going to try and share my story about exactly how that happens.
Through his book “Hope: How Street Dogs Taught Me the Meaning of Life”, Niall transforms personal struggle into a powerful narrative of healing, purpose and compassionate action!
Don’t miss his inspirational keynote session at the Dublin GFSI Conference next March, “From Chef to Canine Crusader: Solving Global Challenges – One Man, One Vision,” and join him for an exclusive book signing networking lunch: discover an inspiring journey of healing and purpose, and leave with a signed copy! Register for The GFSI Conference in Dublin next March!
