A Day in the Life of Tom Lonsdale, campaigner, activist, and author

Kangaroos hopping into Tom Lonsdale’s back garden is a regular occurrence, and no doubt one of the perks of moving to Australia from the UK early on in his career. Having graduated from The Royal Veterinary College, University of London in 1972, he has had a long and varied career as a veterinarian. He is also a writer and campaigner against highly processed commercial pet food. He has published three books and a series of newsletters in which he advocates for a natural diet for pets.

After 25 years as a full-time vet, Lonsdale switched to writing, selling his clinic and relying on a small stream of investment income to support him while writing his first book, Raw Meaty Bones. Like his veterinary work, he approaches writing as an act of service, motivated by his passion for raw meaty bones (as the ideal food for pets) and a strong belief in the importance of educating people on the harms of junk pet food. 

“I retired from clinical work to write down [that] which I knew to be vitally, vitally important for the good of the planet, the pets, the people,” he notes. “I felt that I was fulfilling my obligations.”

However, writing to educate people about adverse pet food consequences and popularising information that may not sit well with everyone came at a cost. Lonsdale had to work with lawyers to avoid legal actions, and experienced delays in publishing due to the perceived controversial nature of his writings. He persevered and, with the help of his editor and publisher, Raw Meaty Bones was finally published in August 2001.

Lonsdale began writing in “the days of infancy of the internet,” with most of his research coming from hard copies of papers and magazines. “Very hard to find if you don’t know what you’re doing,” he notes, “but I did it.” Despite the obstacles, he ensured that he found balance in the way he worked. He would start his days with a coffee and would spend no more than a few hours writing each day, making sure to take days off in between.

“Any more than three hours working at a creative endeavour is just a waste,” he explains. “The brain’s not working adequately after that, and any output is going to be dull, uninteresting and a bit prosaic. It needs a bit of verve, a bit of life in what you're putting on the page.”

He also makes sure that he’s working in a stress-free, quiet, joyful environment, and would have reminders at the top of each page he’s writing. “Happy, inform, educate, something like that,” he says, to get him “into the happy zone, into a trance-like state. It was lovely.” 

One of the more enjoyable parts of his writing journey in recent years was working with a Brighton-based cartoonist on illustrations for his latest book, Multi-Billion-Dollar Pet Food Fraud. He’d been searching for one in Sydney, but the search engine connected him with a cartoonist halfway across the world. The collaboration added a fun, creative dimension to the process of putting the book together, “that was highly enjoyable to send off ideas, then receive email responses,” he recalls. “And because of the time differences, you'd often find stuff arrived in the middle of the night, and you wake up in the morning, and there it is. Oh, that's exciting! And then respond.”

Recording his audiobooks at a hip-hop recording studio was another highlight. “I loved it. That was just a whole other world,” he says. He also created a signature song to enliven the recordings. Lonsdale wrote the verses, and his son composed the music.

Contemplating his achievements, he is most proud of two things: his work on the Cybernetic Hypothesis, which was published in the Journal of Veterinary Dentistry, and the medals he received from the Dog Writers Association of America for winning the Best Book Award and Best Website in 2023. 

He is now past retirement age, but his passion for writing and advocacy remains strong. If he has the time, he would like to collate ten years of Raw Meaty Bones Newsletters into a book “that can serve as a testament available for future generations about this living history of how the discoveries were made.”

Editor: Sahana Sitaraman

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