Young Filipina Advocates to Look Out For

Shell-o! I am Em Quintana, also known as The Vegan Mermaid in the Philippines. I have been mermaiding since 2013 both performing as a mermaid and teaching mermaid classes. When in human form, I am a registered nurse by profession currently serving the community of Barangay Rosario in the City of San Pedro, Laguna.

I became vegan primarily for health reasons, but living with a cat made me contemplate on a lot of things and I began researching deeper about veganism. My cat made me realize that how can I love one and eat the other? Since then, I am vegan for the animals and promised myself to advocate and dedicate my life for them in this lifetime.

Why do you think it’s important to advocate for farmed animals?

As humans, we have the moral responsibility to take care of every Kind in this planet - humans and non-human animals alike. Farmed animals do not speak our language and we can actually do so much for them by empathizing and speaking their realities as fellow sentient beings.

Taking advantage of them in immoral ways means neglecting our responsibility as the highest and most intelligent species on Earth. Their demise is our demise, too. They are connected to us and we to them. What we do to them, we do to ourselves and our planet because everything is connected. WE ARE CONNECTED.

What farmed animal advocacy or plant-based initiatives are you currently doing or planning to do? 

This year, I promised myself to get out there and do more for the animals by doing more volunteer work for NGOs like AEP, Metro Manila Save, and PETA. I also signed the petition to endorse the Plant Based Treaty and have been encouraging people to sign up and endorse it, too. 

I take advantage of social media to share facts, as well as my personal experience about farmed animal advocacy in the hopes of enlightening and encouraging fellow humans to empathize with them.

As a community health nurse, we are planning and studying how we can integrate and encourage our community to eat more plants and less meat. It will be a long and tedious journey, but I am hoping and manifesting that we will be able to execute and encourage our community leaders and residents.

If you could share with us, like one story in your farmed animal advocacy journey that has touched you so well and you still remember, please share here. Feel free to add links, photos, a video, etc.

There is a stray cat that I often see on my way home and we became friends when I started greeting her whenever I saw her. She would meow back at me and ask for pets and it has been going on whenever we come across each other.

There is another stray cat that I feed in our street that I have become fond of. He is the only friendly one among the other cats living in our street. I named him Frienny and whenever he sees me, he will run to me, flop drop, and will ask for pets.