http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_19476527

Animal rights activist group protests Pasadena company

By Lauren Gold, PasadenaStarNews.com, Monday, December 5, 2011

A group of animal rights activists Monday gathered outside the office of a research firm to protest the use of 32 monkeys for radiation tests.

ChromoLogic, a private research company on North Vinedo Avenue, uses the monkeys to determine how humans might fare in a nuclear disaster. The monkeys are being tested in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, this week, protestors said.

The protest was organized by a group known as Stop Animal Exploitation NOW! (SAEN) and lasted about two hours.

"My goal is to get as many people to know what's going on and to stop this," said Monrovia resident Josh Gutier, who attended the protest. He said he has been attending animal rights protests for more than 10 years.

SAEN's Los Angeles representative Julia MacKenzie said ChromoLogic will use $8 million in federal funding to test the 32 Rhesus monkeys.

ChromoLogic CEO Naresh Menon said this testing is to develop a machine to test humans for radiation poisoning after a nuclear radiological event like the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

SAEN representatives said they received a call from a "whistle blower" this weekend saying the testing would begin on Monday.

"Because the experiments are starting this week, it was a last-minute urgent thing (to organize this protest)," MacKenzie said.

Menon said the testing was following a "congressional mandate," and would produce an important piece of technology for determining how to treat people who have been poisoned by radiation.

He said animal testing is the next step in ChromoLogic's research. The company has been conducting non-animal research for more than two years, Menon said.

"We are looking at people who are receiving potentially lethal doses of radiation, and non-human primates are the only model available to test it on," Menon said.

He also said that none of the animal testing is done in Pasadena.

The controversy over ChromoLogic's radiation testing echoes a similar protest by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) against a NASA primate radiation experiment in 2010. The project was discontinued as a result of the protests, MacKenzie said.

MacKenzie said actions like the Monday protest can be effective in influencing companies that practice animal testing.

"When you expose them and they have to justify what and why they are doing it, it has an impact," she said.

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