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Delayed laws to ban the Australian cosmetics industry from selling products tested on animals may still allow ingredients which have been tested on animals to be imported, say animal welfare groups.
Key points:
- Government's election promise last year was the ban would come into effect from July 2017
- Animal welfare groups say they are 'disappointed' by the announcement
- Greens senator says the ban relies on voluntary industry codes of practice
Just under 12 months ago, in the lead-up to the federal election, the Coalition announced it would ban the sale of cosmetic products tested on animals from July this year.
But the fine detail of this year's budget papers revealed that those restrictions would not be in place until 2019 at the earliest.
Animal welfare group PETA says it is "disappointed" by the delay.
But activists also warn the laws will not ensure that products sold in Australia are untainted by animal cruelty.
Ingredients in cosmetics could still have been tested on animals
By most assessments, Australian laboratories ceased testing cosmetics on animals three decades ago.
But concern has been raised that many products sold in this country still contain ingredients that have been tested on animals elsewhere.
Nicola Beynon, Australian spokesperson for Humane Society International, said she was concerned the new laws would not change that.
"We don't want the ban to only apply to ingredients that are exclusively used for cosmetics," she said.
Senator Lee Rhiannon, from the Greens, said the proposed new law would be a ban "in name only."
"People buying cosmetics in Australia, even once this ban has been introduced, can't be confident that their cosmetics are no longer being tested on animals," she said.
"We need to go to the issue of the ingredients. What the industry does is import animal-tested products and ingredients. And that's what we need to tackle."
She said the legislation would also rely on voluntary industry codes of practice.
"We know that they don't work," she added.
The man who has been given responsibility for implementing the ban, the Federal Assistant Minister for Health Dr David Gillespie, defended the Government's approach.
"We can't uninvent the thousands and thousands of chemicals over the last 40-50 years that are already on the register," he said.
"This is a prospective going forward ban. In the legislative world this is actually happening very quickly."
The ABC requested a comment from Accord, the organisation representing the cosmetics industry in Australia, but did not receive a response.
Topics: animal-welfare, science-and-technology, animal-science, chemicals-and-pharmaceuticals, australia