Before making the ethical connection on the path to veganism, Jackie Norman spent 18 years working in an industry that she says causes suffering to both humans and the innocent, sentient beings with whom we share this world.

As one of the 65 – 75% of the world's population who is lactose intolerant, I haven't had a sip of cow's milk since I was first diagnosed as a baby. Perhaps this is one of the reasons it took me so long to realise the devastating harm caused by the dairy industry to both human health, and to the animals who have their milk, and their babies stolen from them. Nothing new or exceptional about that, you may think. Unless you consider I was part of the dairy industry for 18 years.

I was still a teenager when I arrived in 'clean, green' New Zealand. I lived with my then partner, who worked on a large dairy farm. There were two herds of cows, which would get milked one after the other; first thing in the morning and late afternoon. It wasn't long before I got roped in to help around the place and as I spent each day surrounded by these peaceful, docile creatures and acres of rolling hills, I felt I was living the dream. It wasn't just me who felt that way. Everyone I knew was part of the industry; workers at the bottom of the ladder like me, sharemilkers or farm owners. For us young people, it was seen as 'the' career to aspire to. Wholesome, good, honest hard work. You got paid a lot of money to milk cows but just as importantly there was security. If you knew how to milk cows, you never had to worry about money, or lack of work for the rest of your life.

I loved being around the cows from the start. They are very intelligent, social beings. They all have different personalities; they can be sweet, cunning, cantankerous, shy, curious. They have leaders, a hierarchy. They have friends – including best friends – and they like routine. They like to come into the milking shed in the same order every day and I always knew when I would see each one and greet them. I guess you could say I had a gentle introduction to the industry. I had been vegetarian on and off since the age of 13 and working with the animals now really cemented that for me. I could never eat an animal I knew! Yet as I sang to the cows every milking time and talked to them cheerily, I still had no inkling that I was now playing a part in causing immeasurable and unimaginable pain and death. After all, I was only milking them, right? Milking cows didn't hurt, it wasn't killing them.

But it was killing their babies. Newborn calves who were born male, or the wrong breed or colour, or too early, or too late. Babies who were born too small didn't even make it onto the 'bobby truck', they were simply bludgeoned over the head as 'they weren't worth anything'. I couldn't understand it. Cows carry their babies for nine months, just as we humans do. How could these babies have been growing inside their mothers for so long and given birth to, only to be killed immediately? Literally born to die? In 18 years, nobody told me the answer – not the real answer. Every time I cried I got told to 'harden up'. Yes, it was sad but this was the way it was and had always been. Not one person told me the reason that more than 1.6 million four-day-old calves are taken from their mothers at birth and slaughtered every spring was so that humans can drink the milk which was intended for those baby bovines. As a result, I didn't see it either.

During that time I witnessed all the things you hear about, the beatings and abuse these animals suffer at the hands of farmworkers. People were always so stressed, so angry. Go, go, go, got to get the job done. I couldn't understand why many of the workers I encountered were even in the industry. They never seemed to want to be there any more than the cows did. Over the years I thought countless times to myself that the life of a dairy cow was one of the saddest, most wretched existences of any animal there was.

It took me years to escape the industry but I finally did. Even so, it wasn't until I went vegan in 2017 that I finally – finally! - made the connection between dairy and death. So much death. So much needless, heartless and devastating loss. So much greed, such inhumanity. The moment the penny dropped, my mind was absolutely blown. To think I had been a part of – of that. The guilt was almost too much to bear and I found it very, very hard to live with myself. I still do. I have nightmares and flashbacks all the time. I wish I could take it all back, but I can't. All I can do now is use my years of experience to speak out against the industry I was once a part of and help to create a future without dairy.

Looking back, I can see I was just a puppet. We all were. A puppet manipulated by one gigantic, all-controlling industry, along with the everyday dairy consumer. These days, things are thankfully changing. I lost my twenties and thirties to milking cows but young people don't want to do that any more. The incentives have gone, along with the so-called 'glory days'. People no longer want to drink cow's milk and are enjoying the benefit of an ever-increasing array of healthier, tastier, cruelty-free plant milks. The dairy industry is simply no longer sustainable. Over 95% of New Zealand dairy products are exported and our government spends $12 billion on propping up the industry – more than the entire industry actually earns. We have one of the highest rates of colorectal cancer in the world, linked to our drinking water quality, our rivers and waterways are unsafe to swim in and two-thirds of our native fish are threatened with extinction, all as a result of our intensive dairy farming. The suffering caused to both humans and the innocent, sentient beings who share this earth with us HAS to end.

Jackie Norman is a freelance writer and author of several books, including the cookbook Easy & Delicious: Everyday Vegan, released in 2020. Jackie is a member of non-profit organisation Vegan FTA, where she works as a writer, researcher and co-host of the series Activist together with husband, Gareth Scurr.  Facebook.com/veganfta