VEGAN F.T.A JACKIE NORMAN I was told recently by an animal rights advocate of rather mature years that ‘You can’t call yourself an activist unless you’ve been arrested’. Once upon a time I would have agreed with that. The first encounter with animal rights activism I remember was as a youngster growing up in the UK. My dad was out for his usual Sunday afternoon walk in the forest when he was knocked to the ground and beaten by a woman with a stick. It turned out she mistakenly thought my dad was part of the hunt she and a group had turned up to protest against. Luckily the only part of Dad which was injured was his pride, but it made the papers and from then on, I thought all activists were like that – angry, violent and ‘extreme’, and to a kid like me, a bit scary. It never occurred to me that those people had shown up because they cared, because they didn’t want innocent animals to be pursued, hurt and killed by a bunch of entitled humans purely for ‘sport’, and they were willing to do anything to stop it. 134
FORÇA VEGAN
Four decades on however, I know just how it feels to care that much. I also have a very different view of what – and who - an activist is. We often hear people refer to their transition to veganism as a journey, and mine has most definitely been that. I went vegetarian at the age of 13 in the eighties, after being given a brochure at school. I can still picture it now, it said ‘SCREAM’ in big letters. My mum just about had heart failure; for one thing I was a fussy eater who didn’t like vegetables and I’d been intolerant to dairy since birth! But somehow I survived and went through my school years doing projects and presentations on various forms of animal exploitation, from seal clubbing to the Draize test. It was important to me, I couldn’t believe the cruelty and I really wanted people to know
what went on behind closed doors so they could boycott it too. I had no idea what I was doing back then was a form of activism. I just wanted people to stop hurting animals. In 1992 I hadn’t long finished my A-levels when my life took a very different turn. After a whirlwind fling with a Kiwi barman, I ran off to the other side of the world to start a new life in New Zealand. He came from a family of dairy farmers and milking cows was all he’d really known so we got a live-in job on one of the local farms. The first few months were idyllic. I thought it was the most wholesome thing to be doing with my life, out there in the fresh air all day. The farm was huge, with two herds of dairy cows. Ironically I’d always been terrified of cows growing up, but now being among them so
