Healdsburg Teen's Actions for Animals Earn peta2 Award

Street Team Volunteer's Anti-Fur Protests Net Results 

For Immediate Release:
December 30, 2009

Contact:
Rachel Owen 757-622-7382

Healdsburg, Calif. -- A volunteer for peta2, the world's largest youth animal rights organization, has won a Star Street Teamer Award from the organization for her contributions to animal rights. Sixteen-year-old Jasmine De La Torre has been lending animals her voice since she was 11, when she went vegetarian after intervening when she saw children throwing rocks at a neighborhood cat. She is now vegan, saving the lives of more than 100 animals a year through her diet alone.

"Jasmine embodies all the qualities of a great activist: compassion toward the most vulnerable members of society, energy, determination, and know-how," says peta2 Director Dan Shannon. "She's setting an example not only for her community but also for our nearly 200,000 other peta2 youth activists who want to help animals."

Jasmine puts PETA videos like "Meet Your Meat" on her MySpace page and writes letters to companies that exploit animals, but fur is the issue closest to her heart. After she and other members of the local animal rights group demonstrated in front of Bella's Boutique on the day after Thanksgiving, known as "Fur-Free Friday," the store stopped selling fur.

More than two-thirds of the fur on the market comes from China, the largest fur exporter in the world, where no laws protect the rabbits and foxes--as well as dogs and cats--on fur farms. Fur-farm employees snap animals' necks, slam their heads to the ground, or anally electrocute them. As a result of these inhumane and often ineffective methods, many animals are skinned while still conscious and moving.

For more information, please visit peta2.com or peta2's blog.