Michel Vandenbosch is Belgium’s best-known animal activist and founded GAIA in 1992. Under his leadership as policy and campaigns director, GAIA has become Belgium’s most influential animal welfare and rights organization with more than eighty thousand members. It has largely contributed to obtaining unprecedented legislative measures and court rulings that have made a difference for large numbers of  animals in various domains of animal exploitation. GAIA is a long-time member of Eurogroup for Animals, the Brussels-based umbrella body of eighty leading animal welfare societies in Europe. 

Michel’s campaigning has included animal suffering in slaughterhouses, horse races, cattle markets, force-feeding for foie gras production, factory farming, animal testing, and the fur trade. He is a founding board member of the World Federation for Animals (WFA), a global membership organization representing the animal protection movement at intergovernmental level. Michel is also a member of the Animal Welfare Advisory Council to the Animal Welfare Minister in Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels.