Update – Senator Back’s Ag-gag Bill referred to Senate Standing Committee for review

Senator Chris Back’s Criminal Code Amendment (Animal Protection) Bill 2015, which seeks to criminalise private investigations into animal abuse, also known as an ag-gag law, was referred to the Senate Standing Committees on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport on 12 February 2015.

Submissions closed on 12 March 2015, and the Standing Committee is scheduled to hand down its report on 13 May 2015.

Animals Australia and Animal Liberation Victoria are both gathering signatures for petitions opposing the proposed bill.

A discussion paper on ag-gag laws in Australia prepared by the RSPCA can be found here.

Also see LFA’s earlier post on this topic.

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Animal Testing

Cruel and painful testing on animals is widespread in medicine, agriculture, pharmaceutics and education. However, the scientific merit and human benefit of many of these tests is contested by numerous scientists.

Amendments to the Code of Practice have seen ‘benchmarks’ implemented calling for the three R’s: reduction (less animals used), replacement (non-animal alternatives) and refinement (ensuring suffering is minimised).

Unfortunately, there is still a long way to go before there is an onus on people to utilise non-animal means of testing – such as the use of proteins from human cells.


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